This past Sunday I took the 6:19 am flight to Kahului to preach and celebrate Holy Communion at Kingsfield Anglican Church. They have their service at 10 AM and All Saints has ours at 4 PM so it allows me to be at both parishes in a single Sunday —which is both exhausting and incredibly life-giving.
This week I preached two different sermons: one on Mark 7 at All Saints and one on Acts 9 at Kingsfield (they’ve been going through the Book of Acts for a while now and so I jumped-in where they were in the series). Since the folks at All Saints didn’t get to hear the sermon, I thought I’d post one strand of reflections from my preaching notes:
Read moreOur Gospel lesson from Sunday, Mark 1:21-28, is a great example of a chiasm. It is also a great example of how a chiasm, other than being a nifty piece of literary trivia, can help us understand and teach the Bible —can help us ask of a given part of scripture “what’s this mean?” and “what is the main point?”
Read moreAristotle and Derrida both point-out how Touch is unique among the senses. For one thing the other four senses have a clear object: Tasting tastes flavor; Hearing hears sound; Sight sees light; and (easiest of all) Smelling smells smell. But Touching? What does Touching touch?
Read moreWhen Abraham lays Isaac on the altar, he hears a voice crying-out from heaven “Do not lay your hand upon the boy-child” (Gen 22:12). Abraham, in some sense, wasn’t planning to “lay his hand on the child” though, right? Wasn’t he going to sacrifice him? Why doesn’t the voice say “Don’t sacrifice the boy-child” instead? Certainly, that would have been more accurate.
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