Sermons

Some members of my family believe in signs.  Find a random penny on the sidewalk and, to them, that particular penny is no longer random and no longer meaningless on the sidewalk.  Discover an object one has long since forgotten, and you start to consider why you found this object NOW after searching all over… [Read More]

Let’s jump right into this text, shall we?  There is something deeply disturbing about reading about human companions being divided somehow and taken—one disappearing and one staying—in the middle of their daily tasks. There is something unsettling and unusual about being called to remember Noah, and the story of the flood, this close to our… [Read More]

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.  In the last few sentences of his Proclamation, Lincoln says this: “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart… [Read More]

After reading again today’s challenging lectionary passage, I am reminded of a song that the band R.E.M. released in 1987, “It is the End of the World as We Know It.”  The song was intended to be a kind of stream of consciousness, but some of the lines from the song sound eerily familiar and… [Read More]

Do you tend to view life from the basement or the balcony? In the 1989 film, Dead Poet’s Society, the teacher, played by actor Robin Williams, teaches literature to a group of private school students.  One day, during class, he jumps up on top of his teacher’s desk to make a point to his students…. [Read More]

When my husband was dying, while in the midst of nurse visits, bandage and dressing changes, and extremely heightened tension, I would make my husband promise that he would come back and speak with me after he died.  I was irrationally insistent about this, as one can be irrationally insistent when one is determined to… [Read More]

I have been noticing cars lately.  It’s to be expected when one is car shopping.  Suddenly you start noticing the color, make, model, and year of every car advertisement and every vehicle that passes by you on the highway.  But I also tended to notice cars before the whole car shopping thing started.   Mostly it… [Read More]

You are not your illness. You are not your disability. It can be hard to remember this, especially when cancer comes calling, or the insurance company sends you a statement regarding your deductible, or the nurse manager calls to “check in,” or when you have to wear a mask or use a walker or get… [Read More]

They arrive in my mailbox.  Those slick and shiny catalogs of clothes, or new-fangled, wacky contraptions, or things-everyone-simply-must have.  Even when I give notice that I don’t want the extra mail, they still come—usually because I have forgotten to check off the “do not send” box, or I have inadvertently clicked where I should not… [Read More]