† The comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory told a story about a time he was eating in a diner. His chicken dinner was in front of him. Some men sauntered up to him and one of them said, “Sir” (they didn’t call him ‘sir’) “whatever you do to that chicken, we are going to do to you.” Gregory sat there for a moment. “Something wrong with your hearing, sir?” (they didn’t call him ‘sir’) “I said, ‘Whatever you do to that chicken, we are going to do to you.’” Gregory hel

† In five years of walking around the city, I have met people claiming to be Jesus and Satan, archangels and dark angels, soothsayers and savants and secret agents. Once I even met the lost son of the supreme governor of the Church of England. When I am my better self, I smile and nod, offer a moment of my attention and a prayer of God’s blessing, while keeping my skepticism to myself. There is much madness in our world. So then, you will better understand the reluctance of

† The alphabetically-adjacent theologians David Fagerberg and Austin Farrer have something to say about the Trinity. Most Christian theologians would agree that the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is a society of Love spilling outward to create the cosmos and us. That the Trinity invites us to ascend into this love, and in order to do this, the Son descended to Earth and Hell to take us back to heaven with him. That through Baptism, the Holy Spirit energizes us to ch

† How many epicleses do you count in today’s liturgy? Epiclesis is a Greek word that means to ask or to invoke. In Christian liturgy, it means to ask or to invoke the presence of or the work of the Holy Spirit in what we do. The principal liturgical epiclesis happens after the bread and wine are offered in the Eucharistic Prayer: “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son.” At the epiclesis, I will place my hands over the bread and

† The older I get and the longer I do this work, the more comfortable I am with faith. I used to read as much as I could from religious skeptics. Not skeptics of religion, but ordained and academically credentialed people of the Church who wished to steer their readers away from a kind of simplistic biblical and theological literalism dependent on faith, to more of a symbolic approach that used scripture and dogma as myth; important founding stories, to be sure, but just that

† San Franciscans, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. As I went through your city and looked carefully at your objects of worship – ballet, opera and symphony halls; galleries of fine and modern arts; athletic stadia with shrines to the greater deities of ball; stages for the theater, popular music, and drag shows; opulent gardens and verdant parks; chic cafes with small portions, short pours, and staggering prices; gated mansions and guarded stores; streets

† Exorcism, writes David Fagerberg, is “reclaiming something for its original purpose” (a). In scary, suspenseful movies – and in the rite carefully administered in real-life, yes, even in the Episcopal Church – exorcism reclaims the body and soul from Satan’s possession and gives it back to its owner, who is cast in the image of God. But exorcism is even more common and less scary than what is depicted in the eponymous novel and film. Jesus, who is the second Adam, and Jes

† I have been a gatekeeper for as long as I can remember. Growing up on a farm and raising sheep, I learned from my dad when to open and close the gates between pasture-fields to keep our flock where we wanted them. Child-raising was all about gatekeeping. I made parenting decisions on what was best for my family multiple times a day. When I worked as a buyer in a clothing store, I was a gatekeeper. I chose what was in and what was out. The “On Language” column in The New Y

Lord Jesus, stay with us […] be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread (BCP 124). † I am reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian. He was an opponent of the Third Reich and took part in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Dietrich was imprisoned in a concentration camp and executed by hanging on April 9, 1945. Dietrich, like many Ger

It was reported that one reason the president fired the attorney general was because she was insufficiently retributive and vengeful against his political enemies. Someday our nation’s strife will be o’er, the battle done. The powers of death will have done their worst, but they will be gone. And then, as we recover and rebuild, we will have moral choices to make, outside of the system of laws which will, I hope, bring justice to the injured and punishment for those found g

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Fifty-eight years ago yesterday, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred, murdered in Memphis by an assassin’s bullet. Doctor King was a man of passion. His was a passion of love for the Beloved Community, a liberated society made up of all people, God’s beloved children freed from the shackles of racism, militarism, and rapacious capitalism. And Doctor King’s was a passion of suffering in his s

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! It is one of the masterworks of ancient literature, this brief story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. And it strikes many modern listeners as abusive and sadistic. What kind of God would ask such a thing? What kind of father would agree to it? What did Sarah, the boy’s mother do when she found out, if she found out? What was the emotional aftermath between Abraham and Isaac? And why, in God’s

I had confidence to enter this sanctuary. We arrived at All Saints’ nearly five years ago, never having laid eyes on any of you or this place, save for virtual meetings and a tour on Zoom. Bound by pandemic protocols, the search process that brought us together was unusual. From far-off Flint, Michigan, Kate and I arrived at 1350 Waller Street in our rented, ten-foot U-Haul truck. Your senior warden at the time, our beloved Margaret Taylor (of blessed memory) greeted us when

It was hard for him to tell his wife that he loved her. He was a man of his culture and of his generation. She longed to hear him talk about his feelings for her before his advanced stage prostate cancer took him from her. I was their hospice chaplain, and she asked me to help. He admitted to me that such words didn’t come easy, but of course he loved her. Then he told me that, from his hospice bed, he arranged to pay off their mortgage, have some appliances replaced, and t

What are you passionate about? For some of you it could be a spouse or a lover, children or grandchildren, close family or dear friends. Maybe it is a certain artist or author or musician. Or a sports team. Or a hobby. If you are lucky like I am, you are passionate about your profession, your occupation, your work. And God: let’s not forget to be passionate about God. Passion cuts two ways. Passion means love. Passion also means suffering. For which loves on your list hav

Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely. † The whole house of Israel was in exile. Held hostage in far-off Babylon. As good as dead. Dry bones in desolate graves. Resurrection was unthinkable. Restoration unimaginable. Their hope was lost. How is your hope these days? You have bones and sinews and flesh. But what about your breath? We live in a bloviating Babylon. Full of hot air yet lifeless. Noxious gas instead of oxygen. Our breath is in e

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me (3x) Let the Midnight Special shine an ever-lovin’ light on me This blues song from the early twentieth century was covered most famously by Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969. It is a song about an inmate watching from behind bars, hoping the passing nighttime train – the Midnight Special – will stop for him and spare him from another day of prison’s dark drudgery. In the prologue to his gospel, Saint John writes of Jesus

Is the Lord among us or not? † In the summertime, when I was a boy, playing outside, I would drink from the hose. Inside, mom gave me a small dixie cup like this, and I had to re-use it until its waxy coating became translucent and its bottom nearly fell out. In Flint, during the lead-in-the-water crisis, everyone drank water packaged in plastic: single-use, half-liter bottles and gallon jugs were most common. No point in refilling used bottles with bad water. Nowadays I

Would Nicodemus follow Jesus on social media? Some of Nicodemus’s peers would, if only to troll Jesus and respond to his posts with angry emojis, the way some people today follow public figures, not out of admiration, but to see what madness they are up to and to make cutting comments. I think Nicodemus would follow Jesus, but as a lurker, someone who looks at Jesus’s feed but doesn’t engage with it. He wouldn’t give a thumbs-up for fear of being ridiculed or un-friended by

I’m friends with a bartender in Flint, Michigan. She tells the story when once she delivered a round of drinks to a table and one of the men grabbed her backside. She wheeled around and walloped him. “What?” he shrugged. “I didn’t know you couldn’t do that. You should put up a sign or something!” – Thus beginneth today’s sermon on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Theologically-speaking, Paul is correct. Sin is not reckoned when there is no law. But, as the bar owner late