Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the living God who is, and who was, and who is to come. Advent means coming, and for the Church it means the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Judge. God our Father created us […]
Sermon Topic: Choosing
Advent Waiting
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. The tone of the season of Advent, these few weeks before Christmas, is one of expectation, a time of waiting and excitement. Many of us wait with joy for Christmas Day – the crowds on Fifth Avenue swelling, the bustle of families preparing for […]
High Stakes
We know that Saint Paul was in prison when he wrote to the Philippians; his text says so itself. Which imprisonment is not clear. Paul’s life included a number of imprisonments; this one may have been in Rome, the final two years of his life, A.D. 61–63. In any event, Philippians is a letter contextualized […]
I Believe
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen. This is the first of a series of fifteen sermons at Sunday Choral Evensong by the clergy of Saint Thomas on the Apostles’ Creed. The sermons will take the whole creed, phrase by phrase, right to the end. By […]
We Piped for You, but You Would Not Dance
Sometimes the stories that Jesus tells are clear, straightforward, and easy to understand. That is not the case with this evening’s gospel, in which Jesus compares the people of his generation to children sitting in a market place, calling to one another, “We piped for you, but you would not dance; we wailed for you, […]
Presents and Presence
Right after Christmas Day some radio program was interviewing people about presents they wish they’d gotten but didn’t get and about presents they got but were going to exchange or return or pass on to someone else. One young woman on the program (it may have been one of you) was describing a present she […]
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Many, many centuries ago, not long after the world was made, when I was a curate in my first parish, I was, like most curates in those days, in charge of the youth group. The group decided during one Lent that they would like to erect a large cross outside the church in time for […]
Now is the Time
The prophet Isaiah counsels that if the people of Israel would put off the yolk that was about their neck, the Lord would bless them. (Isaiah 58.9ff) One day Jesus was teaching in a synagogue when he spied a woman stooped over. A variety of diseases or conditions might cause someone to be in such […]
Get Rich Quick -- for God!
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen. Before we get to today’s Gospel, let’s see what comes before it. It is all in Saint Luke’s 12th chapter. Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem to face what he knows will be his Passion and Death, […]
Telling People about Jesus
It can be a discomforting thought, that I am supposed to tell other people about Jesus. You know what I mean? And I don’t mean I, Victor Austin, as a priest; I mean I, Victor Austin, as a baptized person. It’s true for you too: you, if you are baptized, are supposed to tell other […]
