Bryan's Blog

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City 30 June 2019 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Galatians 5:1,13-25 Luke 9:51-62 I don’t know how it is with my esteemed colleagues who stand in this pulpit, but sermon preparation at my house goes something like this. Linda will ask me, “Is your sermon finished.” No matter how I respond, either yes or no, she will then ask, “Are you going to [blank] people off?” No matter what the topic is, I generally respond with, “Probably.” “Why,” she asks. “Because it’s my job,” I respond. After 25 years of ordained ministry, Linda doesn’t get that part of the role of a deacon in the Church. That role is found in the bishop’s charge to the diaconal ordinand on page 543 of the prayer book. The concluding sentence of this charge is paramount, “At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.” [1] There’s an old axiom that abbreviates this charge by s...

The Last Sunday of Epiphany 2-3 March 2019 Exodus 34:29-35 Psalm 99 2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2 Luke 9:28-36 Welcome to the last Sunday of Epiphany.   Yes, as incredible as it may seem, as cold as it is today, Lent is already upon us. And if Lent is upon us, can Easter be far behind?   And with Easter, the promise of spring.   Believe me, those who have heard me whine about the weather and lack of sunlight for the past several months are yearning for the advent of spring with every fiber of their being. But before we get too far in our anticipation of spring and Easter, I need to pull us back into Epiphany one last time, because we have a long, dry forty days of Lent between us today and the joy of Easter.   To set the stage for Ash Wednesday, at the end of the service today we will symbolically bury the word alleluia, which we don't say during Lent, until Easter, when you will hear the alleluias again.   Our readings today also set the ...

Thanksgiving Day, 2018 St. Paul’s, Kansas City Joel 2:21-27 Matthew 6:25-33 Thanksgiving has come around once again; a holiday for gathering with distant loved ones and rediscovering all the reasons for not seeing them more often.   We gorge ourselves on turkeys and all the products of a bountiful harvest, and then settle in for the real reason for the celebration, football. Football on Thanksgiving Day has been around almost as long as the sport itself.   The first intercollegiate championship game took place on Thanksgiving Day 1876, and by the 1890s more than 5,000 club, college, and high school football games were taking place on Thanksgiving.   Major games, such Yale vs. Princeton, could draw crowds of 40,000.   The NFL took up the tradition in 1934, when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears.   They are recreating that game today, but I personally recommend Washington at Dallas, followed by Atlanta at New Orleans this evenin...

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 17-18 November 2018 Mark 13:1-8 Have you ever seen the “Planet of the Apes?” I’m not talking about any of the recent reboots, with Andy Serkis jumping around in a suit that would let CGI magic convert him into a super smart chimpanzee. I’m talking about the original, with Charlton Heston playing an astronaut that crashes on a world where apes are the predominate species, and humans are mute beasts which are hunted as vermin. I first saw it in the summer of 1968, when I was in the last stages of flight school in Savannah, Georgia, before going to Vietnam, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Yes, I’m that old. At the end of the movie, Charlton and his mute girlfriend rode up on the remnants of the Statue of Liberty. Charlton realizes that he is actually on Earth, an Earth wherein everything he has known has been reduced to rubble by the actions of the previous predominant species.   And he goes ape. ...

30 September 2018 St. Paul’s, Kansas City Esther 7:1–6, 9–10; 9:20–22 Psalm 124 James 5:13-23 Mark 9:38-50 The book of Esther recounts how the Jewish exiles in Babylon were saved from extermination by the happy coincidence that one of them was married to King Ahasuerus. The remembrance of this deliverance makes up the Jewish festival of Purim , which is usually celebrated in February or March due to the Jewish Lunar calendar, so, accordingly, the Revised Common Lectionary puts it in the Fall. Tradition holds that during the reading of Esther in the Synagogue, every time the name of the bad guy, Haman, is mentioned the congregation makes noise, traditionally with a device like this, called a gragger. As we all know kids love the opportunity to make noise during church, so Purim is especially boisterous in Synagogues. However, for today’s reflections I was drawn to our Gospel reading. The disciples approach Jesus and tell him that someone was casting out...