St. Dunstan's Anglican Church: Recent Episodes
St. Dunstan's Anglican Church
Introduction This morning’s Gospel reading is a continuation of last week’s Gospel reading, which presents some complications since, due to the threat of the storm, we did not have services last Sunday. However, I did preach on the readings from last Sunday on Wednesday when I filled in for the healing…
Introduction Today marks a turning point in the ministry of Jesus and in the Gospel of Mark itself. Mark begins his Gospel with a conflated quotation. He takes Isaiah’s promise the the Lord would return to his people and combines it with Malachi’s threat that when the Lord comes to his Temple, it may…
Introduction One of my favorite pieces of information about Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is that it likely wasn’t written to the Ephesians. The words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ are missing from some of the earliest manuscripts. This is particularly interesting because Paul mentions a letter that presumably isn’t in…
Introduction Have you ever had this thought? I can’t believe I did/said that. A statement like that enters our mind when confronted by someone else or our conscience about something wrong we have said or done. Several things are happening at once when a statement like that enters our consciousness, not…
Introduction When the ACNA liturgical calendar is followed properly, the first Sunday of Epiphany is a celebration of the Baptism of Jesus, and the last Sunday of Epiphany is the Transfiguration. I say “properly” because we moved the Feast of Epiphany to the first Sunday of Epiphany this year, but in…
Today is Christ the King Sunday. This Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays to preach because the preacher has one job this morning, and that is to talk about the kingship of Jesus Christ. A few weeks ago I preached about the end of the biblical story, which is not disembodied life up among the clouds…
The parable we hear this morning follows the one we heard last week. In that parable, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom. The bridegroom was delayed, and his delay revealed which of the virgins were foolish and which were wise. The wise virgins brought…
Paul begins this morning’s reading by saying, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep.” 1 Thess 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. By “those who are asleep,” he means…
Introduction This morning, Isaiah prophecies a feast upon the mountain of the Lord, the Psalmist’s cup overflows, Paul commands us to rejoice, and Jesus tells a parable about a wedding. The common theme here is that a party is going on, so we should get on board. I hear from a few of you each week who…
Introduction Last week we were reminded that simply coming to church and saying our yes to God and his call for us to work for his kingdom is not enough. The son who does the will of his father is not the brother who says yes and then refuses to work in the vineyard, but rather the brother who originally…
Introduction Our parable this morning reminds me of the words of the Apostle Paul. We’ve been studying the opening chapter of Romans in our adult catechesis, and in Romans 2 Paul says this: For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.…
Introduction Like every passage in the Bible, in today’s Gospel reading, context is king. The first word in our reading is “for” because Jesus intends this parable to explain what he’s said moments ago. In fact, our English Bibles put a chapter break here, but Jesus is still continuing his discourse…
Today is one of those days when a Holy Day, what I sometimes call a Red Letter day, falls on a Sunday. When that happens, typically speaking the rector is free to move the celebration of the Holy Day to the following day, which is what we are doing. So, January 1st is traditionally a celebration of the…
Introduction First of all, let me start by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and thanking you for being here tonight to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Tonight is not merely a celebration of the birth of a child nor even the birth of the Messiah. Tonight we celebrate the birth of our God. Tonight…
Introduction Today, we stand on the precipice of Christmas, one of the two great feast days on the Christian calendar. And here, on the last Sunday of Advent, the lectionary, like St. Matthew, wants us to understand a few things before we come together to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. So that…
Introduction You’ve all heard about the apostle Doubting Thomas. Today I’d like to introduce you to Doubting John. This isn’t something that we talk about very often, but even John had doubts about Jesus’ ministry and identity. Let me point this out to you again in case you missed it in our reading:…
Matthew 1-2 Before we look at ch. 3, let’s take a quick review of St. Matthew’s Gospel thus far. St. Matthew begins his Gospel by giving the genealogy of Jesus, which, as we’ve talked about in our course, The Story of the Bible, is a not-so-subtle way of summarizing the story of Israel, emphasizing a…
Introduction In our Adult Catechesis course, the Story of the Bible, we began by talking about worldviews. Everyone has a worldview. Actually, you probably have several because worldviews aren’t typically consistent in any one person. Our worldview is how we make sense of the world. It’s basically the…
This is, arguably, my favorite Sunday. Please remember though that I speak in hyperbole, so I reserve the right to call many other Sundays my favorite Sunday. But this, I think, really is my favorite Sunday besides Easter because on this Sunday I get to confess as clearly and as loudly as I want to the…
Yesterday Yesterday, I started my morning by checking my calendar. Now I’m pretty bad at reaching out to people on their birthdays, but I’m trying to get better. I have started adding birthdays to contact information, and I’m trying to reach out to people on their special day. I’m still awful at it,…
Galatians The Epistle to the Galatians is about identity. What does it mean for a person to be a Christian? How do you get in, and what does it mean once you’re in. Paul’s answer answer comes at the end of chapter 3: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither…
Not a Moment, but a Journey Becoming Christian, or becoming Christ-like, is not something that occurs in a single moment. It is rather more like a journey. The process of becoming more like Christ is something that takes place over a long period of time, over a lifetime. But every journey does have a…
In Him Last week I tried to set the context for some of Paul’s ethical teaching thats come at the end of chapter two and then throughout chapter three. What I tried to make clear is that, in Paul’s mind, at your baptism, something happened. For Paul, baptism isn’t merely a symbolic act of obedience.…
sola fide As good heirs of the Reformation, we all know that we are saved sola fide, by faith alone. Because of this we talk about faith, we promote faith, and we use the language of faith when we talk to each other. For all of this, when you try to pin someone down on what exactly faith is, that can…
Looking to Jesus Last week I talked about Hebrews 11 . This morning, I’m going to talk about Hebrews 12 . But before I do that, there’s one more thing I want us to notice in Hebrews 11 . Hall of Faith This chapter is sometimes referred to as the great hall of faith, for the author writes of Hebrews tells…
“Is He—Quite safe?” In my office, I have a poster of a painting that hangs in the Wade Center at Wheaton College. The painting is named Aslan, and it was painted by Sally Brestin. It’s very large, and it hangs on a wall all by itself. It feels imposing to stand in its presence. When I stood there and…
Starting at the End I’ve said many times that the Christian life is the process of becoming who we already are in Jesus Christ. That is to say, when you were baptized, you were baptized into Christ, and in Christ, you already are everything that you ever will be. The Christian life then begins at the…
Prayer for All People I want to talk about prayer this morning, specifically prayer for our leaders. Paul, in our reading from 1 Timothy, finally gets to the body of his letter. All of chapter one is essentially introduction and greetings, but now with chapter two Paul moves into the formal body of his…
Prayer and Fasting On occasion, every priest will have something on his mind that he would like to communicate with his parish, but the Sunday lectionary doesn’t exactly agree. The readings point in one direction, while the priest wants to go another. Today is not one of those Sundays. In fact, because…
Choose the Right Side As many of you know, the thing I like to talk the least about is money. I’m happy to stand here and ask for help when one of our brothers or sisters is in need, but talking about the offering or church finances publically makes me terribly uncomfortable. I was having a conversation…
We Are All Sinners In homiletic textbooks (these are books on how to preach), they often say that a good sermon has three main points: an introduction, a body, and conclusion. Then they break this down even further and say that the body of the sermon likewise should have three and only three points,…
Colossians One of the difficulties with Pauls’ letter to the Colossians is that it has this condensed quality to its writing. Or more correctly, because we are heirs of the Reformation tradition and therefore so used to and familiar with the Paul of Galatians and Romans, which are written in response…
Stories Jesus loved to tell stories. Regardless which of the canonical Gospels you are reading, one thing that is clear in each of the Evangelist’s portrayal of Jesus is that Jesus loved to tell stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world. We do not actually live by a rigid set of facts that…
There are two great celebratory seasons in the church calendar. The primary celebratory season is Easter, during which time the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the launch of the new creation. The other celebratory season is Christmas, during which time the Church celebrates the…
The scene in our Gospel reading is incredible. If we weren’t all so familiar with it, we’d call it absurd. It’s one thing for Paul to rebuke Peter to his face, which we hear about in the letter to the Galatians, but for Peter to pull Jesus aside and rebuke him to his face is something else entirely.…
40 Days in the Wilderness Every First Sunday of Lent, whether we are in Year A, B, or C, the lectionary has the Temptation of Jesus featured in the Gospel reading. This is because our 40 days of lenten devotion are to be modeled off of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Unique to Year B, however,…
When I became the priest-in-charge of this Congregation in the months before I was installed as Rector, Keith and I had a conversation. I honestly can’t remember if he called me or if he stopped me at church, but I remember the conversation. At the time, Keith was Senior Warden, which meant that he,…
Today, I’m going to say something to you that isn’t true, or at least, it isn’t the whole truth. I’ll let you figure out which part isn’t the whole truth. One of the goals of an Ash Wednesday service is to remind of us our own mortality. The words that the celebrant speaks at the imposition of ashes…