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Sermon: Feast of Mary Magdalene, July 22. She came to the tomb in the dark, wept, asked where the body had been taken. Then Jesus spoke one word: Mary. The risen Lord’s first word on Easter morning was a proper name. She recognized him. And she said: "I have seen the Lord".
July 22: Mary Magdalene. The risen Lord’s first word to any person on Easter morning is a name. He says ‘Mary.’ She recognizes him by her name spoken. The first Easter proclamation follows: I have seen the Lord. Four words spoken first by a woman who had been healed and refused to leave.
The wheat and the tares. Let both grow until the harvest. The patience God requires is not indifference to evil; it is the refusal to execute a judgment that belongs to the Son of Man alone. Creation groans. The righteous wait. The harvest is certain.
Isaiah 55:11: "My word shall not return to me empty." Matthew 13 shows most seed producing nothing. But the word accomplishes God’s purpose even when it does not visibly bear fruit in every hearer. In the good soil, it exceeds every expectation.
Matthew 11:29: take my yoke upon you. The yoke is not effortless but good, kind, well-fitting, shaped for the one who wears it. The burden of Christ is light not because following costs nothing but because he carries it alongside us.
July 4. The BCP appoints Matthew 5:43–48 as the Gospel: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, be perfect as your Father is perfect. The Church reads the hardest text in the Sermon on the Mount on Independence Day. The collect asks we exercise our liberties in righteousness and peace.
June 29: Peter and Paul. On the shore of Tiberias, Jesus asks Peter three times: do you love me? The same number he denied. Each question overrides a denial. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. And then: follow me. This is what restoration looks like.
June 29 falls in the Season after Pentecost, in the week of Proper 8. It arrives the day after the Sunday on which the lectionary appoints Matthew 10:34–42, the end of the commissioning discourse, the cost of following Jesus, the cup of cold water given in his name. Peter and Paul are the New Testament's two supreme exemplars of that commissioning: one who was sent to the circumcised, one to the uncircumcised, one who denied and was restored, one who persecuted and was arrested by grace. Together they do not merely illustrate the apostolic calling. They define it in its full range.
Not peace but a sword. Take up your cross. Lose your life to find it. And then: a cup of cold water. Nine verses; the full arc of discipleship.
Three times in six verses Jesus says do not be afraid, and each fear-not comes with a reason. The truth will be revealed. God alone holds eternity. And the Father who numbers the hairs of your head has not lost track of you. The theology of Christian courage.
The Pharisees had the sacrifices exactly right. They’d lost the "hesed". Jesus quotes Hosea to the Bible scholars: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ Without the inner reality, the outward form is a morning cloud — gone before noon. This is where the Season after Pentecost begins.
The Trinity is not primarily a doctrine to master — it is a God to worship. On Trinity Sunday we look past the acts of salvation to the one who performed them. We have been receiving his gifts all season. Today we behold the giver.
Before Jesus was born, his presence was already causing joy. John leapt in the womb. Elizabeth prophesied. Mary sang the Magnificat. The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth is the gospel's first proclamation — and one of the church's most overlooked feasts.
The Season after Pentecost begins tomorrow. Twenty-six Sundays of Proper 5 through Christ the King lie ahead, beginning June 7. The Ember Day gift is this: we begin having seen the King on the throne, having had the coal touch our lips, having said ‘here I am, send me’ before the first Sunday arrives.
Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers not to do the ministry for the congregation but ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry.’ Ember Days: we pray for those being equipped, and we ask how faithfully we are doing the equipping ourselves.
Trinity Sunday stands alone among the church's great feasts — no event to commemorate, just the eternal mystery of who God is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons, the foundation of everything we believe and everyone we're called to be.
Moses saw two men prophesying outside the structure and said: would that all the Lord’s people were prophets. That prayer was answered at Pentecost. Now the question is whether the Church will steward the outpouring faithfully. The fields are white. The laborers are few.
Four times a year, the Anglican calendar sets aside three days for fasting, prayer, and intercession for the Church's ministry. Most Anglicans have never heard of them. Here's what Ember Days are, when they fall, and how to observe them.
This Memorial Day, we explore the heart of the Gospel through John 15: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” We honor those who served and gave their lives while fixing our eyes on Christ, the true Keeper and the Lamb who shepherds the multitude.
Mary Magdalene wept alone in a garden on Easter morning. By Pentecost she is gathered with the 120 in prayer, then stands with the whole community as the Spirit is poured out on all flesh — and three thousand more are added that same day. The arc of Easter does not end with a private encounter. It ends with a community sent.
