Proper 9, Year C-2022                                                       July 3, 2022, Martin Yabroff at Holy Spirit, Vashon (based on my sermon for Proper 9, 2019) Today we hear three insightful lessons about graceful living – living with grace, with serenity – in a complicated and often conflicted world.  We speak often in church of God’s grace – God’s love – for us.  Today let us consider living with open-ness to such grace and being centered in it. Now this is the Fourth of July weekend.  These reflections can also relate to our nation and how we exercise our power as citizens in a nation of conflicting expectations.  I invite each of you to apply these lessons on your own to the social and political issues of the day as you see them fitting. In our first lesson, we meet Naaman, a very able Syrian general, a successful and powerful man.  Like all of us,…

Sermon for Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8C), June 26, 2022 The Rev. Jeffrey Gill 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62 It has been quite a week, has it not. Unsettling. Although we’ve known for some time that a decision from the Supreme Court on the fate of Roe v. Wade was coming, the reality hit this week, and suddenly, the rights of women to make choices for themselves about whether to terminate a pregnancy was no longer guaranteed in our Constitution. The wide-ranging implications of this ruling are devastating, including the criminalization of women’s health choices in over half the states in the US. A woman’s right to choose was “settled law,” as recent Supreme Court nominees had assured us while seeking appointment to the Court. And yet, no longer is it settled law, thanks to their votes to take it away. The hard-won…

June 19, 2022 Reverend Glenn Petersen, Vashon Episcopal – Church of the Holy Spirit Isaiah 65:1-9; 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39 We Belong to Christ God is God; we are not.  God creates, God speaks and it is so.  God breathes into us and we are made alive.  God mends the broken and God welcomes those we exclude.  God is God; we are not. God speaks to his people in the voice of prophets like Elijah and Isaiah, who proclaim that Yahweh is God, they are not.  God makes covenant with them, but they keep breaking it, taking it for granted, abusing their relationship with God.  God gives a Torah, a way to live; e.g. through Isaiah God says: Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow; bring the homeless poor into your house. But do…

June 12, 2022, Holy Spirit, Vashon   the Rev. Jeffrey Gill Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15 There’s a joke among clergy that the Curate always gets to preach on Trinity Sunday. It’s a great opportunity for a recent seminary graduate to demonstrate his or her vast knowledge of historical theology, to put their newly honed eloquence and erudition on display… (Or their humiliating ignorance, as the case may be!)… Or just to show how clever they can be, trying to make it all relevant and meaningful. I guess I get to be your curate today, and you’ll have to be the judge. Last Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, was the feast day for this, the parish of the Holy Spirit, commemorating the coming of the Spirit to empower Jesus’ disciples for their work in the world. And today we celebrate another feast day dedicated to the Holy…

Rev. Ann M. Saunderson “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God, while I have being, may my meditation be pleasing.”   As Pentecost fulfills what Jesus promised let us find a place in our hearts for the Holy Spirit. We’re at another threshold in the liturgical year—Pentecost– fifty days from Christ’s resurrection on Easter becomes the entry point to the churches longest season. Ordinary time or the season after Pentecost, spans the end of Spring to late Autumn.  Today our focus is on the promised coming of the helper, the advocate, the Holy Spirit and how that coming manifests in our lives now.  On Pentecost the awesome power of God is revealed seven weeks after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The intimacy of Jesus’ relationship with God and what that meant for Jesus’ followers and what it means for…

Sermon for Easter 7 (C) May 29, 2022 Holy Spirit, Vashon The Rev. Jeffrey Gill Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26 This past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension, the day on which Jesus ascends into heaven, no longer bodily present, and the disciples are left to carry on his work.  It ushers in this liminal time when Jesus is no longer present, and the Spirit has not yet come, and the disciples are left alone to figure it all out. A few years ago I was at an Ascension Day service with our then-Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in Bogota, Colombia, and in her sermon she noted that artists have often depicted the Ascension with Jesus ascending into the clouds, and only his feet dangling below.  Ever see one of those?  Those feet, she said, are ours.  We are the ones left to take…