St. John's Episcopal Church Montclair

Religion and science agree that love is the way forward. But the power of love is a lesson we have to keep learning. After all, if 25 clergy singing and praying together outside of Delaney Hall can shut down business as usual for six and a half hours and instill enough fear to bring armored cars and barricades the next day, love and faith must be pretty powerful. The lines that mark who belongs in...

“My sheep hear my voice.” This week I’ve been meditating on how it is that we, Christians living 2000 years after Jesus, can not only hear Jesus’ voice, but recognize it. It is no small task. Especially in an age when anyone with a smart device can use an AI voice generator to make it sound like their favorite celebrity is “saying”…well, whatever they want. Technology aside, there are so many voic...

You can tell a lot about a space by the way it is designed. So, what piece of furniture seems to be the most important in our church? In some churches the place where people speak - the podium or pulpit - is front and center. But in our church, the altar or the table is front and center. That is because the most important thing we do in worship is share the feast of the Holy Eucharist.

Who among us could believe if the disciples had not first seen and touched the risen Christ? These stories of people seeing, touching, interacting with Jesus have been written down in scripture so that we may come to believe. Our faith depends on the faith of those who came before us. To some extent, we all live on faith borrowed from the disciples, the apostles, from family, friends, and mentors...

When Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener, it is not a mistake at all. It is a proclamation of Jesus’ oneness with God. The one who knows how to look death in the face and create new life from it - because he has experienced it first hand. Jesus has not only experienced resurrection, he facilitates it. Author and minister Rohadi Nagassar writes that “Jesus is a gardener who cultivates life in all...

I wonder what the disciples did on that first Holy Saturday. After the public humiliation and death of their friend, their teacher, their God. After Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. After it was finished. Did they hide away from the crowds, afraid anyone would recognize them as one of those Jesus followers? Did they start making preparations to go home, wondering i...

How did we get here? How is it that the newborn baby in the manger, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and gifted with myrrh, who we proclaimed to be the Prince of Peace - grew up to be the man put to death on a cross, wrapped in burial linens and anointed with myrrh, all because he disturbed the peace?

“Everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Seems simple, doesn’t it? And yet, if Christians have a reputation around the world…I’m not so sure it’s for our love. At least not the type of love Jesus gave. The full hearted, embodied, break down barriers and risk it all type of love

If you have been to the Grand Canyon or someplace similar you’ve seen the layers showing centuries of change. If stones can see or sense the history they’ve lived through, they’ve seen a lot. And so when Jesus says that if the people were silent for his procession into Jerusalem the stones would have cried out, it signals something for us. It signals that God’s creation - even its inanimate parts...

Isn't it wonderful to have joy in church? And to have laughter and smiling, and things where we're goofy here in our faith community. Just being and having a lightness in community. That's what Cross Roads is.

"The Prodigal Son." This is the title most often given to the parable we heard from Jesus this morning. But there’s a self-righteousness to this title. It says: look how wastefully extravagant the youngest son was. That’s the meaning of prodigal after all, wastefully extravagant. He not only asks his father for his inheritance early - a gesture that says nothing less than “I wish you were dead so...

I am convinced that Jesus taught in parables because he knew they would endure. That they would be stories that would be told across time and space. Parables are the great equalizer in Jesus’ teachings because they are for everyone. You can access a parable whether you have studied scripture or not, whether you know fancy church words or not, whether you have spent years in a pew or are exploring...

Consider the next time you plan to take a train, bus, or subway. Would you rather spend the ride talking to a stranger or sitting in quiet solitude? As a lifelong introvert, I know which one I’d choose, hands down. So much so that last time I took a train I ran back home a block because I forgot my headphones. You know, the universal symbol that says “don’t talk to me” without having to say anythi...

What if Jesus had said yes. What if Jesus had said yes to the devil in the wilderness? After all, he had not eaten for 40 days...would it have really done any harm for him to turn a stone into bread so he could eat? Would we be in a better place if Jesus had said yes to ruling all the kingdoms of the world? Would more people have believed in Jesus if he had made a spectacular show by throwing hims...

Ash Wednesday, the season of Lent, even mid-week prayer are all invitations to interrupt the busyness of our lives. To step off the hamster wheel of achievement and autopilot and remember our mortality. To remember that our time on this earth is limited, but it is also a God-given gift. To consider poet Mary Oliver’s question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious lif...

This week I heard Rev. Anne Russ, author of the Doubting Believer blog, talk about the story of the Transfiguration in a new way. She said that Jesus probably sensed a change was going to come on that mountaintop, and yet he only brought Peter, John, and James with him. I wonder, why might Jesus have only brought three friends with him to the top of that mountain? Maybe, Jesus only brought these t...

All Christians have the responsibility to care for those in need. This care can be expressed in many ways, such as giving someone a ride, running errands, prepare meals, watching a child or pet or shoveling a driveway. Stephen Ministry can be seen as an organized and informed type of care. Dr. Ho, the founder of Stephen Ministry, stated anytime you express Jesus' love in a way that meets people's...

What does it mean to be rooted? It is all too easy to feel blown about by the wind, or current events, or the ever changing weather forecast. To get caught up in to-do lists, calendars, and deadlines. But this morning, we heard two separate scriptures - Jeremiah and the Psalm - proclaim blessing on trees planted near flowing water. Rooted in a place where the sustenance they consistently receive a...

“If you say so.” These words are the skeptic’s yes. As if the speaker is reserving the right to say “I told you so” when things don’t work out. Words meant to convey that I don’t agree here, but you’re the one in power, so I guess we’ll do it your way. And yet, when we hear these words spoken to Jesus, they take on another quality. Because for all the resignation behind the words “If you say so,”...

All around the world, Episcopalians repeat Simeon’s song during Compline, the final prayer service of the day. For a long time I thought singing this song was simply a way to close out the day thanking God for sending us Jesus. But this week, I realized it’s also an invitation at the end of each day to pause and consider where we’ve seen evidence of God’s handiwork in our lives. After all, the bab...

This week I gathered with a handful of other clergy from across the Northeast to reflect on what it means to be spiritual leaders. Talk about divine timing. Early on in the retreat, they asked us the big question. “Why?” “Why are you a spiritual leader?” There were as many answers to this question as there were people in the room, but the first answer a colleague shared has remained with me this w...

There are a lot of predictions for what the year 2025 will bring. I won’t claim to know which are true and which are not. But I do believe, as Mary and all the faithful people in Birmingham in 1963 did, that how we start matters, and how we start will give us the tools we need to continue on the journey. We can become part of the change we want to see - we can become part of Jesus’ miraculous lega...

In a world where it is easier to stand against something, at baptism we boldly proclaim who and what we stand for. In a society where the individual is prized and praised, at baptism we acknowledge that we need God’s help and we promise to support one another in our walk of faith. In a world that seems to accept that tragedies happen with increasing frequency, at baptism we vow to strive to make a...

One of my favorite traditions around Epiphany is when people bless their houses. It is a reminder that while the wise men traveled a long way to encounter Jesus, it all started in their homeland by paying close attention to the things they did every day. Our journey with God often starts the same way - we don’t have to travel very far at all. We can welcome Christ into our homes and our lives ever...

In the church we have this repeated metaphor of light and dark. But we do a serious and harmful disservice if we assume that darkness is the absence of God, and light is the presence of God. In fact, as the Rev Dr Wil Gafney says, light and dark are not a binary at all. Instead, darkness is a space of holy creativity and generativity. It is where God does new and out-of-this-world things. Darkness...