There’s a joke that I know has been making the circuit in Adare recently, and perhaps farther afield. It is this: “For Lent this year, I’ve given up going to the pub.” Sometimes we have our Lenten disciplines imposed on us from the outside.
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'Be Mine' (Last Sunday before Lent)
If we were in church today, and able to sing, we would sing hymns about love. “Love divine, all loves excelling” comes to mind as a good one. “Amazing grace” is another. A couple years ago, around this time of year, we held an Evensong service with readings and hymns on the theme of love. The reason, of course, is that it is Valentine’s Day, a day about love.
Read More'Taking a Long View' (2nd before Lent)
One of the things I hear from many people I talk to these days is what strange times we are living in. “Strange.” “Surreal.” “Peculiar.” These are the words people use to describe our Covid-19 era. And something that makes these times so strange to us is that our ways of viewing the world are being flipped.
Read More'Knowledge and Love' (Epiphany 4)
A curious thing happens in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus goes into a synagogue and teaches on the Sabbath day. That in itself is not strange. But what is curious are the reactions to his teaching and to his presence.
Read More'All Things Change'
This video was made for the virtual assembly of St. Nicholas National School on 29 January 2021.
Read More'Leadership' (Epiphany 3)
One of the things that has happened to me since I married Kirk is that I have come to love watching team sports. My favorites have become rugby and American football (which we have found a way to watch here in Ireland). In addition to liking the usual things — the competition, the athleticism, watching my favorite team win — I have realized I also enjoy watching examples of leadership. How do the coaches and managers motivate and lead the team? How do the key players work with the rest of the team. Today’s Bible readings raise some thoughts about leadership.
Read More'Listening' (Epiphany 2)
First of all, I hope that you listening to this are well, and that if you are not well, that the healing power and the comfort of God might come to you. These are trying times that we are living in, and I know that those of us here in Ireland are concerned about the rise in numbers of Covid-19 infections. During such trying times, we have a unique opportunity to do something that we might normally avoid doing: listening to God.
Read More'Risk and Adventure' (Epiphany 1)
The first church I served as a priest was a church in Hawaii that each year would have a Eucharist service at the beach. We would hold the service under a shelter and then have a meal together, go swimming, and relax for the afternoon. One year some parents asked if they could have their baby baptised at this service — meaning in the ocean. I immediately said yes. The ocean or a river is a great place to have a baptism — for reasons I’ll mention in a moment.
Read More'Joy to the World' (Epiphany)
I wonder if you have sung any Christmas carols this season.
Read MoreA Message for Christmas
A video made for the last day of the school term for St. Nicholas National School.
Read More'The Spotlight' (Advent 3)
I am picturing someone being on a stage. It’s a dark stage, in front of a crowded theatre — not something we are used to seeing these days. The only light in the theatre is a big spotlight, and it is focused on the one person who is on the stage.
Read More'Comforting or disturbing?' (Advent 2)
This past week, on Thursday evening, I started an Advent class. It’s on Zoom, as many gatherings are these days. Last week we looked at some of the readings for the First Sunday of Advent. They talk about God tearing open the heavens and coming down, so to speak, and about a huge upheaval that will take place, but we don’t know when.
I ended the class by asking whether people found these readings comforting or disturbing. I won’t say what other people said, because that’s their business, but I can tell you what I said. I said that to me they are both: both comforting and disturbing.
Read More'Longing' (Advent 1)
One of my favourite Christian authors lived a very long time ago. It is St. Augustine of Hippo, who died in the year 430. I like him because he was honest and insightful in so many matters regarding faith, and because he wrote some absolutely beautiful prayers. One short but very famous prayer of his is this: “O Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This one-line prayer says so much about human life and human nature: that our hearts are filled with longing — a longing that we try in so many ways to satisfy, but that truly can only be satisfied by God.
Read More'With the eyes of your heart enlightened...'
When I was a child, about 8 or 9 years old, going to Sunday school, I found this parable terrifying. I think I realized even then what a right, what a good thing it is to feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger, and visit the sick, and everything else it says, and how much I would want this if I were hungry or thirsty or sick or in prison or what-have-you. But I could see that we just don’t do these things, now matter how right or good they are, or how much we would want the same for ourselves. And so the reading just chilled me through and through, this parable that is said to take place at the end of time, when Jesus is proclaimed as king and judges the nations.
Read More'Reaching Out'
Kirk and I keep getting a particular phone call. Actually, Kirk is getting it, because it comes through on an American phone number we have that rings through to his mobile phone here. Because we’re living here, but still have business to conduct in the States, we have an American phone number so that people can phone us without having to dial an international number. Mostly on this phone number, Kirk gets scam phone calls.
There is one phone call that keeps coming in. A recorded female voice says, “I am reaching out to you today because your company …” — and usually by then Kirk has hung up. The voice is loud enough that I can hear it across the room.
The words “reaching out” jump out at me. They make me think about the importance of reaching out — and I think that’s why hearing them from a scam phone call seems wrong.
Read More'Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve'
It has been an interesting week for the news. We have had more news about the coronavirus. Each evening I have checked to see what the number of new infections has been in Ireland that day. News comes about the rates of infection in other European countries and throughout the world.
There has been news here and there of Brexit, of war, of refugees, of weather.
And then there has been the American election. It dominated the news, for days.
Read More'Remembering Saints'
Have you ever heard of Thomas Cranmer? How about William Tyndale? You probably know of Columba, but what about Monnica? Hold on, and I’ll tell you who they are.
Read More'Harvest 2020'
Recently I made a video for St. Nicholas School. In these strange times, I can’t go to the assembly each week on Thursday mornings, as I have done in previous years. So instead I took a video on my phone and sent it in to be shown to each of the classrooms. Just like one I sent last spring, I took this video out in the Rectory’s garden. Last spring, I wanted to show some things that Kirk and I had just planted. This time, I wanted to show a few things we were harvesting. We have autumn raspberries, which have turned out even better than the ones we got in spring. But mainly I wanted to show a big pumpkin.
Read More'It Matters What You Think About' (Trinity 18)
It matters what you think about. I have said this before in sermons, in one way or another. The Apostle Paul says it to us in his letter to the Philippians that is one of the readings for this Sunday. “Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things,” he says. He does not say, but he does imply, don’t think about all the stuff out there that is the opposite of these things. Don’t focus on those. Think about what is good and true and excellent.
Read More'Reaching the Promised Land' (Trinity 16) (OR 'Anger at God')
Moses is having a rough time. There he is, with his brother Aaron, leading a group of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people through a desert. The people are Hebrew slaves who have escaped from slavery in Egypt. Life had not been great there, of course, but now that they are in the desert, they seem to have decided that slavery in Egypt was better than wandering through the wilderness to an unknown future.
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