St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

All of the Incarnational stuff from Christmas to Good Friday is the first part of what God is doing to reconcile humanity to God. God is going to humanity in its fullness. This is Part I. Today is the beginning of Part II, the Resurrection.

Our lives are made up of this tension between grief and hope, loss and new life, sorrow and resurrection. This is Lent and Easter. This is humanity and divinity. This is the Paschal mystery, the awful death and the glorious resurrection of our redeemer and sustainer, Jesus the Christ.

 It’s hard for me to imagine how this woman must have felt at finding a strange man sitting by the well, a man who upon speaking to her turned out to be a Jew. Her surprise at the situation notwithstanding, the woman did converse with Jesus, though initially that didn’t go terribly well. As in conversations Jesus had with Nicodemus, a well-educated Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, to those he...

In our Gospel today we have the beginning of a different portrait about a different kind of disciple. It is about Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a man full of faith, he is a well respected community and religious leader, he is wealthy. He has been hearing about Jesus and is intrigued. He knows there is something about God going on in this, but doesn’t quite know what to make of it.

Christmas Eve Sermon The Rev. Ryan Baker-Fones

Rejoice in the Lord always! Again, I say, rejoice! We rejoice, as our collect says, in the bountiful grace and mercy with which our God comes among us to speedily help us and deliver us. And we rejoice in the powerful imagery of restoration provided by the prophet Isaiah.

What Paul reminds us of today is that these stories, and our traditions at this dreary and cold time of the year, are meant as lights for us, guiding, encouraging, reminding us of what is to come, offering hope. The coming of God into our world in the form of a human baby, the Creator of the Universe incarnate, dwelling here among us, as one of us, has ENORMOUS and everlasting implications.

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of a new season. Not only that, it is the first Sunday in the Church Year. So Happy New Year. I hope you had a big party last night, opened the bubbly, and watched the ball drop. Listen to or read Bingham’s entire sermon by clicking “Read More.”

Imagine you are in Palestine when Jesus was proclaiming the Good News. You are not in one of the cities or large towns. You most likely haven’t ever seen a king or a Caesar. You know the stories of King David and King Solomon. They were heroic men, but flawed. In their kingdoms there was suffering and hunger, greed and deceit. One day, a stranger comes to your village and there’s much talk about i...

I love the collect for today. It’s one of my favorites. I’m not as excited about the lectionary readings. They are tough. But what I hope to offer you today, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is a way to engage the Scriptures that both acknowledges the difficulty of the task, and also offers guidance and hope. Let’s take another look at the collect:

In his letter to the Ephesians Paul prays that the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.“ What is that hope to which we’ve been called? For that matter, what is hope?