St. John's Episcopal Church Montclair

Recently I was talking to someone who said their weekends revolve around their dogs; taking them to new parks; having them smell new smells and see new sights. They’re always looking for something new for the dogs to experience. And they said something that stuck with me: “My dogs only get one life, so I’m going to make sure it’s the best life I can give them.” Hm. That’s different.

This morning I want to talk about dreaming. One of the gifts of the spirit I personally believe Paul left out. One of the characteristics that reminds us we are created in God’s image. But dreaming is hard. I’ll never forget I was in a rough space in my life, watching one of those international house hunters shows and one of my friends said how they’d love to live in a house like the one on the sc...

If you heard today’s parable and thought “that’s just not fair,” you are not alone. Science tells us we are hardwired to look for and seek out fairness. In 2003, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal published a study titled “Monkeys reject unequal pay.”

In Paul’s letter to the Romans there is this piece that says “let us live honorably.” Except, in the Greek, it is more like “let us walk honorably.” What do you think it means to walk honorably? I think, when Paul asks us to walk honorably, he is asking us to love our neighbors. Like we say in our services “walk in love, as Christ loved us.” Essentially: follow in the loving footsteps of Jesus.

This week, I am going to suggest that we adopt Dolly’s prayer. God, turn us upside down. Shake loose our fear, our self-doubt, our need for comfort; shake loose whatever keeps us from following you. And when our hands are finally open, show us what you would have us do.

When Pharaoh calls Shiphrah and Puah into his court and gives them a direct order to kill all the infant Hebrew boys as a form of population control and oppression, Shiphrah and Puah refuse to conform. In her book, Womanist Midrash, Wilda Gafney imagines Shiphrah and Puah going back to the rest of the Hebrew midwives and laying the groundwork for a resistance movement. After all, who better to do...

Not every interruption is holy. Especially not in the age of smart phones. But when real people, with real needs are involved, every interruption is an opportunity to experience something new about God’s grace and discover just how far it extends.

Researcher and author Brené Brown writes about the connection between dehumanization and violence. Before people can commit extraordinary violence, they first have to stop seeing other people as fully human. They become labels, threats, problems, or enemies instead of people. The Bible tells us the same thing, through story. Genesis, and the Bible as a whole, begins by telling us that every person...

We may not get to choose what happens to us, but with God's help, we can choose what happens next. Every time we choose kindness instead of getting even, every time we choose forgiveness instead of revenge, every time we choose to feed instead of fight, we help stop the chain of hurt and make room for God's kingdom to grow. So the next time someone knocks over one of your dominoes, remember: you d...

This week, I cannot help but think that the kingdom of heaven is like summer camp. Not because camp is heaven on earth. Camp has all the same stuff the regular world has - sunburn and mosquito bites, cliques and drama. But at camp, some of the things that are usually hidden become visible. After all, Jesus’ parables are about everyday things: seeds, yeast, fishing. Small things that can quietly ch...

In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes that “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” It’s an intriguing image. Because most of the time we feel like we’re waiting on God. Wondering when God will act. But Paul reverses the picture. God is already at work. All of creation is standing on tiptoe, waiting with bated breath, waiting on us.

Meredith Miller, who has spent her career thinking about how we teach the Bible to children, talks about the importance of God-centered storytelling. So often we try to identify who we are in the story - who we would most like to emulate or avoid. But Miller suggests that because scripture is the story of God’s relationship with creation, God is the main character of every story we read, every pas...

In today’s gospel, Jesus says “come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Now, Jesus wasn’t talking about backpacks. He was talking about the things we carry inside of us that are emotionally heavy.

So maybe Abraham’s faith needed a little testing after all. But… here’s the thing. I can’t help but wonder if God’s test is of a different sort. Because this week I noticed something I never noticed before. God tells Abraham, “take your son, your only son, Isaac.” Except Isaac isn’t Abraham’s only son.

Some people, like Hagar, seem to live at the edges of the story. And yet, through her, we learn something essential about God: that God sees those the world overlooks and hears those the world would rather ignore.

When is the last time you heard an idea so good it made you laugh? The kind of idea that seems too good to be true, but there’s a part of you that hopes it’s not. Scripture is full of promises that seem so impossible they’re laughable. Take the promise that Sarah will have a child at 90 years old. Or the promise that God can build a beloved community from people who are diametrically opposed. And...

Most of us want clarity before we begin. We want to know how we’ll measure up; if it’s even worth trying; how others found success and how long it took them to do so. But the disciples didn’t take a spiritual gifts survey and wait for certainty. They didn’t sign up for classes and practice in private. They discovered their new gift for languages by speaking. They jumped right in. As scary as it is...

Jesus is asking the disciples to tell people about God’s radical love, talk to people they might not otherwise encounter, to welcome people into the family of God, and to teach them about Jesus’ way of life. Biblical commentator Matt Skinner describes it as “adding collaborators and accomplices to a movement that places mercy and compassion at its core.” I think that’s something we can all get beh...

In our gospel story Jesus had some interruptions too. He was sitting down at dinner with some new friends, but people kept barging in on the dinner party. Some of these people needed his attention right away. They were green light interruptions, where God was saying “Go, someone needs love” and some were red light interruptions, where God was saying “Stop, don’t get distracted from loving the pers...

Bishop Hughes Visits St. John's May 17, 2026

This week I was reading John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis, and a line jumped out at me so much I had to read it a couple of times. John reflects: “I am prone to despair, and so I know its powerful voice; it just doesn’t happen to be true.” Despair is loud, but loud and true are not the same thing.

Jesus tells us that the Father’s house has many dwelling places. I used to hear that as a promise about what is waiting for us, rooms already built, already assigned, already ours. But I think it means something more active than that. When we genuinely welcome each other, when we enter the work of loving someone as they actually are, we discover more of the house. Welcome is not the management of...

One Sunday, early in my priesthood, a particularly bad variant of COVID was making the rounds. Many people were quarantining at home that morning, including my fellow priest and most of our Altar Guild and ushers. Everything was going smoothly, until it got to communion. I realized I had forgotten to count how many people were in the congregation, so I didn’t know how much bread to consecrate....

The beloved slogan of St. John’s is “many paths, one journey.” And one of those paths is the road to Emmaus. Even though scholars cannot agree where exactly Emmaus was, we’ve all walked that road. It’s that journey between the grief and fear of Good Friday and the joyful surprise of Easter Sunday. It’s the road we walk after one door closes and before the next one opens. The road between a diagnos...

The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in. St. Peter says, “Of course, just show us your scars.” The man responds, “I have no scars.” To which St. Peter says, “What a pity. Was there nothing worth fighting for?”