Since the time I last preached, we had a momentous few days. The police officer, Derek Chauvin, was tried in the murder of George Floyd and was found guilty. It was only a few minutes that passed in order for the country to breathe a collective sigh of relief, and then there was another police officer who killed yet another black teen, a 15 year old girl, in Columbus. The data is not in on this one, and it may have been justified, not every police shooting of a black or brown person is murder, but the timing could not have been worse. I never watched the cell phone video of the murder of George Floyd. I think in my previous job as a Washington DC medical examiner, I have seen too many dead black men. I know what lifeless dead bodies look like. The more I read of the…

Let us pause for a minute. We are back in the church. Let us just take a minute to let that sink in. This past week, I heard afresh Jesus’s “peace be with you.” It’s a heck of a thing for Jesus to say to a bunch of disciples… if you think they have been freshly traumatized and think they are staring at a ghost. I think I understand this story now on a whole different level—the peace part, not a ghost part. This is not the first time that these words have been heard new, fresh and profound. Think of people over the course of centuries gathering again after a war, or after any displacement. Things go back to a new normal—eventually. And it takes time to figure this new normal out. We may feel like we are out of the woods, but this virus is still a new…

Christos anesti! Alethos anesti! Try it again…  Christos anesti! Alethos anesti! “Mortal, can these bones live?”  “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Christos anesti! Alethos anesti! “Mortal, can these bones live?”  “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Christ is Risen,  The Lord is risen indeed.  This second year of Holy Week in a pandemic, and hopefully the last, and here is Easter, but alas without its usual fanfare.  Last year we bantered around the awareness that the very first Easter was celebrated in fear and hiding.  That scene is best painted in the Markan Gospel, which we just read.  Last year’s Mathean Gospel is a little more joyful and a little less fearful. This year, we have grown somewhat used to the virus, and perhaps we…

And so… we have arrived in Jerusalem. The time has come. We stand at the edge of a great mystery. The mystery we celebrate each year in Christ, the Crucified Risen One, who did not shrink from dying into our death, to raise us to life. Every year we do this, every year it doesn’t get old, every year has something to show us, every year there is something for us to take away from the readings of scripture in our liturgies about this great mystery. Good Friday is understandably marked by the reading of the Gospel of John’s version of the Passion Narrative. However, for this Good Friday, I want to spend some time with the other assigned readings. The other readings in some sense provide a commentary or contextual support as to why the crucifixion of Jesus is important. He was not the only Galilean the Romans crucified—there…

Palm Sunday and Good Friday mark the points in the year where, we, as a church with a liturgical calendar (in this context, means the readings are preset), read the most amount of the Gospel. If you haven’t read one of the Gospels cover to cover (so we say), go ahead and do so. The shortest Gospel is Mark, so if you are trying to just get one done, start there. Anyway, you notice when we manage to read a large chunk of Gospel lectionary, we have a lot with which to deal. Over the millennia, people much more intelligent than I have spent a lot thought around this narrative, trying to make sense of Jesus’ death and then resurrection, in other words salvation and/or atonement. Most likely I have nothing new under the sun to pass onto you. (But then since we are the recipients of a holy tradition…