It has been said that when a preacher first starts out in the job, there is the tendency to toss everything imaginable into a sermon. The preacher wants to get this or that point across, and of course we cannot forget this other point. The result is that the sermons tend to be a bit long and all over the road.
I wonder if there may well also be such a tendency in preachers who are about to retire.
Read MoreJeremiah is having a rough time this morning. He’s been watching the behavior of the people of Jerusalem and Judah, and these words from the Lord come out of his mouth:
“But my people have changed their glory
for something that does not profit….”
But there is another way to look at this story. Jesus is God Incarnate, God made flesh, and the power of God is in him. When Jesus heals the woman, it is the power of God coming forth from him to heal her, to set her free. He can do no other, for in the face of Satan, God’s power must be revealed. Yes, we have here a manifestation (a showing) of God’s compassion and goodness, as embodied in Jesus Christ, but we also have a manifestation of God’s power.
Read MoreIn all the instructions about prayer that we hear from Jesus in the Gospel reading, we see a paradox — two things that seem completely opposite but are nevertheless both true. The first is that underneath all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer is a theme of humility. And the second is that nevertheless, despite being humble before God, we are to persist, to pound on God’s door, so to speak.
Read MoreI have heard people ask before whether there is a passage from the Bible that sums up the whole Christian faith. Something that just bundles up the whole faith into a few words.
Read MoreHave you ever been really thirsty?
I mean really thirsty, like you think you could drink gallons. I drink lots of water, I can easily get thirsty, but I know I have never experienced thirst so bad like someone walking across a desert or someone in a war zone…
Thirst is so basic to human needs — the need for water — that the Bible uses thirst repeatedly to describe the longing for God.
Read MoreSome years ago, I was a member of a group of people who had a decision to make. It was an important and official decision, and the group was firmly divided between two different camps. One side wholeheartedly wanted to say yes to the decision; the other side just as firmly wanted to say no. I was on the no side, which was the minority.
As we wrangled over the decision, it became clear to me that the difference between us was that both sides saw the presence of evil in the circumstances that led to this particular situation, but we had a totally different view of evil.
Read More“When I was a child,” the Apostle Paul says, “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”
And I wonder, at what age do we become an adult? When is it that we grow up, really and truly?
Read More“For with you is the well of life
and in your light shall we see light.”
Christ is the well of life, and Christ is the light of the world, who shows the glory of God.
Read MoreHappy New Year! We begin again, here in 2022.
And as we begin this new year, there is a collective hope that it will be different. There is a hope that this year, we will finally deal with the coronavirus, or it will genuinely just go away, so that when 2023 rolls around, we will no longer be wearing masks, or social distancing, or worrying about a new variant, or doing any of the things that have become part of our lives in the past two years.
This is what we hoped a year ago, at the beginning of 2021. We were glad that 2020 was behind us, the year that Covid spread throughout the world, and we all thought that surely by the time this New Year’s came, Covid would be gone, and life would have returned to our so-called “normal.”
Read MoreI have some breaking news for you.
You know what breaking news stories are. Breaking news is a story that we are not expecting, that suddenly explodes upon the world. Like when you’re watching a program on TV, and a news flash appears across the bottom of the screen, or when some media outlet sends you alerts on your smartphone. They always say, “Breaking News,” and then give you a headline and a few sentences about some major event.
Read MoreIn the year 2021, in the second year of the leadership of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach, in a coalition government, when Michael D. Higgins was President of Ireland and Leo Varadkar was Tánaiste, when the Most Rev. John McDowell was Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland, and during the vacancy in the episcopate of the newly created United Dioceses of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe, towards the end of the second year of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, the word of God once again came through John, son of Zechariah, to the people of Ireland, and not just of Ireland but throughout the world, wherever Christians gathered to worship on the Second Sunday of Advent.
Read MoreWhat are you waiting for?
Read MoreThe very next words in the Gospel reading we just heard are from Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Jesus has been brought to him to be on trial. And Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?”
What is truth indeed? It’s a big question in today’s world, for fake news and conspiracy theories and questions as to what is truth abound everywhere.
Read MoreWorld War I has been called “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, it did not. War has continued, as we all know. But it is an interesting line to consider when we hear Jesus say to his disciples, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” “The war to end all wars” versus “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” The end of conflict versus the beginning of some sort of struggle.
Read MoreThe past two weeks in eGleanings, our weekly electronic newsletter, I have put in a little news item. It has been at the end, one of the last things in the mailing that Kieron sends out. It is not something that will have much effect on your individual life, I imagine, but it is something that I thought people should know about. It is this: We are now part of a new diocese. Last Sunday, 31 October, our bishop retired as Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe. The bishop of the Diocese of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry also retired. With the simultaneous retirement of both bishops, the two dioceses that they had led joined into one diocese: the United Dioceses of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe. The new diocese stretches from north of Ballina, Co. Mayo, to Valentia Island in Co. Kerry.
Read MoreToday’s service is a memorial service, as we gather to remember all those people from our parishes, as well as family members and loved ones from beyond our parishes, who have died in the past two years.
Read MoreOur Psalm today starts off with this verse: “Give judgment for me, O Lord, for I have walked with integrity; I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.”
We are reading this psalm because of the passage from the Book of Job that we started off with. On Sundays, the psalm we read is always meant as a response to the Old Testament reading, so they will fit together in some way. And our Old Testament reading, from Job, tells of a very righteous man. He has done everything right.
Read MoreRemember back 20 or so months ago when Covid-19 was just a strange virus that had shown up in China? And then we started hearing reports about it spreading. It went to Italy and then to other countries…, until eventually, as we know, the whole world was affected, and we ended up with the pandemic that we have had since then.
I mention this because of what it made me think of as I looked at that map. It showed how interconnected we all are, how interconnected the whole human race is, all around the globe.
Read MoreSo I have to tell you a story about our first reading today, from Proverbs. It’s a famous passage: “A capable wife who can find?” And then it goes on to describe the traits of just such a wife. … But let’s think about it: one could write such a passage for any role in life. A capable husband who can find? And what would we say? What would be the description? Or a capable parent, or farmer, or priest, or doctor, or nurse, or teacher, or shopkeeper? For any role that you fill, if it is a true and honourable role, could you write a description of the ideal of such a person? I certainly think on a regular basis about what makes for an ideal priest. What would be the ideal of the role you fill?
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