This year's Pentecost observance is very different. We are in a time of pandemic. The obvious one being the fear and harm that COVID-19 has loosed upon the world. But as Bishop Michael Curry points out, we are in a pandemic of another kind.

Today on Pentecost, I can’t help but hear that wind as the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, rushing in to fill the life of everyone who testifies to the Love that is stronger than Death – the Risen Christ! Like those first witnesses to the Resurrection, our spirit filled and transformed by his will be gifted the capacity to know and love the world and God knows it and loves it – to embody that mind and love of Jesus so that this world is made new again.

The last petition of Liturgy 16 asks for strength, but not just strength for anything or all things, but strength to overcome the assaults to our faith. Wisdom and truth are the gifts necessary for this power. They provide the basis of our faith as they offer knowledge and understanding of living a divine life in this chaotic culture and world in which we live.

Ezekiel stands in the middle of a valley full of bones. Dry bones. The vultures and scavengers have long since finished their grisly occupation. The pungent smell of rotting flesh, too, has passed. An occasional gust of wind blows through, its lonely whistle unanswered. This is a lifeless and lonely place. Even Death itself seems to have moved on to more promising opportunities…

In the face of systematic racism and ignorance, what can we do? What are our efforts worth when they are weighed against corporate greed and state militarism? How can our efforts for peace and wholeness ever make a difference?

When we encounter the word for spirit in the Bible, we are reading a translation of the Hebrew word "rhuah" or the Greek word "pneuma". Both words are almost onomatopoeic and could be literally translated as breath…

It is our role as Christians to always be moving towards the coming Kingdom of God and not getting caught up in preserving the kingdoms of the past…

Waiting is hard. I say this as an only child who always struggled with “delayed gratification”. Looking back, it seems like I always managed to luck out and not have to do the hard work of waiting…

The metaphors we use in describing our relationship with God are as rich as they are flawed. Our vocabulary for this dynamic is at the same time both varied and narrow. Human-divine imagery can bring us to new depths of faith, but it also risks repelling us from embracing our connection with God due to our own limitations…

Yesterday we celebrated the Ascension of the Lord and most preaching this Sunday will center around this Feast. The next celebration in the church year will be Pentecost that takes place next Sunday where we will celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit given to the disciples to continue Jesus’ work here on earth. But what about that time in-between; that time when Jesus has left them, but they have not received this power; that time of uncertainty, fear, questioning, and anxiety. That time where they are between and betwixt what has been and what is to come.

The Ascension of the Lord is not about Jesus disappearing into the ether, leaving us stranded ‘holding the bag’, so to speak, weighed down with the impossible task of imitating him ‘til Kingdom Come. Not only is that bleak, but it misses the point…

Recently I had the occasion to reflect on a particular theme that can be detected in each of the church office spaces I have occupied in my work as a priest. On a shelf in the corner of the room, there has been a collection of Bibles--old Bibles. In each of the communities I have served, at various times, people have approached me with copies of scripture and asked if I would please take them. They have explained to me that a Bible belonged to a friend, a relative, that it had been found and it looked too important to dispose of or try to sell. Once, I arrived at the church to discover a small box of Bibles and prayer books with a note that simply said "Please take care of these" as if it were a box of unwanted kittens!

I was tilling my garden yesterday getting prepared for planting a new crop. As I was working and watching the machine turn the old hard soil into soft, rich looking dirt, my mind wandered to all of the clichés about gardening that are found in the Bible. I was particularly drawn to John 12:24, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” As I pondered this in my own simple way, it made great sense to me biologically and physically. As I contemplated further, it was death and dying that nearly caused me to run the tiller onto the yard.

How can the Christian gospel – the “good news” of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – become good news for my life? I think this is an important question for us to ask ourselves in Easter Season for this reason: because it is one thing to say “I believe in the gospel” but it is another thing altogether to say “I believe the gospel.”

It’s not often that I preach, or reflect, on the Apostle Paul. To be honest, I usually find Paul to be preachy and misogynistic. Also, he’s kinda disorganized…

“Every year we spend the first few Sundays of Easter telling our stories from scripture about the resurrected Jesus appearing to his friends…And then, as we started to do last week, we begin using the Sunday readings to do something a little different. We begin reading backwards and forwards…”

Today we celebrate and remember Julian of Norwich. She was born about 1342, and when she was thirty years old, she became gravely ill and expected to die. On the seventh day, the medical crisis passed, and she had a series of fifteen visions, or "shewings," in which she was led to contemplate the Passion of Christ. These brought her great peace and joy…

At a recent online summit I attended (virtually) by Wheaton College’s Humanitarian Disaster Institute, retired Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright presented a talk titled “What Should a Christian Say About Coronavirus?”…

The book of Psalms is a collection of scriptural prayers that has inspired divine worship for communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims for millennia. Traditionally attributed to King David, the Psalms are read, studied, memorized, translated, sung, and prayed by faithful believers in every generation…

This Sunday we hear part of Jesus’ Good Shepherd reflections with all those well known lines, “I am the Good Shepherd,” and, “I am the gate.” When I first read these lines, I begin to wonder what it means to be “good” and what it means to be a gate…