The early Sundays in the Epiphany season are dedicated to the revelation of the Son of God in the successful formation of the community of disciples. In Epiphany 2B, the assigned Gospel reading out of John 1:43-51 recounts for the worshiping church Jesus’ calling of the apostles Philip and Nathanael. The devotion of these two,…
Today in the Spirit: Epiphany 1B
Prepositions are important in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). One change in the BCP 2019 that can easily go unnoticed is the designation of Sundays “of Epiphany” in the new book compared with Sundays “after Epiphany” or “after the Epiphany” in earlier books. So we might ask, what does the new title communicate? One…
Today in the Spirit: Christmas 1B
The Church’s messaging on the Sundays following Christmas Day might best be summed up as promises fulfilled with more to come, or light shining with ever-increasing brightness. The Christmas 1 readings are the same all three years. It is on this Sunday that we receive as a Gospel selection the famous prologue to John’s Gospel,…
Today in the Spirit: Advent 4B
The festival day is at hand, yet the Church would have us linger longer in Advent, contemplating all that God the Father has done to foretell and prepare the arrival of “Yeshua” (“the one who delivers”) into the world. In Advent 4, Year B, the assigned Gospel reading from Luke 1:26-38 relates the narrative of…
Today in the Spirit: Advent 3B
It is the Advent 3B selection of readings that really puts the joy in “Joy Sunday.” All four readings include either an explicit exhortation for God’s people to rejoice in the Lord or a testimony of joy from the narrator’s heart. Since all that Mark has to say about John the Baptist before Jesus’ arrival…
Today in the Spirit: Advent 2B
Like many of our favorite movies, Advent 2 takes us, suddenly, to a flashback in time from the noise and upheaval of the Son of Man coming on the clouds to the silence of the Judean wilderness and the sight of a strange man dwelling there. In the Gospel of Mark, though it is shorter…
Today in the Spirit: Advent 1B
Happy New Year, Saints! We return to what the Church calls the Incarnation Cycle in the Sunday lectionary. In Year B of the three-year cycle, we embark this Sunday on the second of three pilgrimages, walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, this time with the Gospel of Mark as our main guide. Having heard…
Today in the Spirit: Proper 29A (Christ the King)
The last Sunday in the Pentecost season, and the weekdays following it, mark the end of what liturgical churches call the Paschal (Easter) Cycle of the church year (On Advent 1 Sunday, we begin the Incarnation Cycle). Since the early development of a three-year rota of lectionary readings (since Vatican II), this Sunday has been…
Today in the Spirit: Proper 26A
It is in these latter weeks of the season after Pentecost, prior to the pre-Advent presentation of our Lord’s teachings on the end times, that the church assigns the hardest teachings of Jesus on Christian living. Throughout these weeks in Year A, it has been a hard slog through teaching on the theme of hypocrisy,…
10 Ways to Preach the Trinity Sunday Sermon
There is a standard joke about a church rector making up the calendar for preaching. He decides to preach all the easy Bible passages. Pentecost? It’s a piece of cake! The Transfiguration? Child’s play. Christ the King Sunday? Not a problem. But then he looks at the Bible readings for the Feast of the Holy…
Today in the Spirit: Pentecost Sunday A
“Pentecost Sunday already!?” While this might be our reaction each year to the arrival of this feast day at the midpoint (more or less) of the church year, we can only imagine the disciples who were ordered by Jesus to go to Jerusalem and wait until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke…
Today in the Spirit: The Sunday after the Ascension A
The Sunday after Ascension Day is the seventh Sunday of the Easter season (just as Pentecost Sunday is the eighth Sunday of Easter), but you will find that nowhere in the BCP 2019 is this Sunday referred to as Easter 7. The designation Sunday after Ascension Day is a change from the BCP 1979 back…
