A sermon on Isaiah 63preached at the Reformed Church of Port Ewen, New Yorkon the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2020 Our passage this morning begins with a terrifying and troubling image. The prophet asks: “Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah in garments stained crimson?” We are unsettled to discover it is the …
A sermon on Isaiah 62 preached at the Reformed Church of Port Ewen, New York on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost 2020 Do you remember that first time you fell in love? You saw him from across the library at college. You watched her as she made her way to your table to take your …
We need not fear, as friends, looking upon each other in holy, spiritual friendship. We do not need to fear to see and be seen by our friends. We walk side-by-side as pilgrims on the way in pursuit of the face of God (Psalm 27:8). But along the way, we can stop to recline and find rest in each other’s bosom, delighting in the love of our friends as they delight in ours.
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. These are some of the first words I ever learned to sing in Sunday School, some of the first words I remember ever learning. Jesus loves me, this I know. My calling to celibacy is not me holding on, white-knuckled, to a faint hope that God might take notice of me if I act heroically enough. No, it is the submission of trusting love that is elicited from me by the love of Another, by the love of God in Christ.
Unsurprisingly, I often find myself in conversations with evangelicals over my use of the word “gay” to describe my sexuality. The concern is that by using this term I am not fully rooting my "identity" in Christ, or that I am going to be tempted to sin, or that through me and others like me …
Like the farmer who lets the field lay fallow and refrains from sowing seed, celibacy brings to bear up on the life of the Church the witness of the rest of the seventh day, of the seventh year, of the seven Sabbaths of years. It speaks prophetically to the Church Militant of the Church Suffering and Expectant.
He loved them to the end, bending down in humiliation before them to wash their feet. He loves them—and you and me—to the end, bending down in humiliation and death into the very heart of the earth—his blood shed to cleanse and wash away the sin of the world, his body given and broken that we would be healed and made whole.
A year ago, there, The sanctuary hallowed and barren. Ash Wednesday, ‘Repent and die.’ The sackcloth and the ashes. Nothing but dust. A year ago, here, A refuge of another kind. Valentine’s Day, love and sex. The drunk old man next to me Told me everything. The woman onstage — Tall and shy and awkward. …
Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet gentle he came, gentle he went, Born of the virgin meek and mild. Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet gentle he preached, ‘Blessed, blessed, Blessed be the …
Christian Reviews of Ideas and Culture
Catholicism, (homo)eros, and everthing else
"To live, to love is to be failed, to forgive, to have failed, to be forgiven, for ever and ever." Gillian Rose
seeking the sacred in the ordinary
