Just before Christmas I was reading a joint Christmas message from the Archbishops of Armagh in Northern Ireland – Richard Clarke and Eamon Martin – one Roman Catholic and one Anglican. Both, by historical coincidence, have the same title ‘Archbishop of Armagh’ and both are the senior primates of the whole of Ireland. During ‘the […]
Sermon Topic: Hope
Simply peace.
In the late 1960’s/early 70’s a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago worked with hospital patients who had terminal illnesses, their families, and those who had experienced the death of a loved one. What Elisabeth Kübler Ross discovered was that, almost invariably, people who were given news of terminal illness, or who were dying themselves, […]
Hope for Hard-Hearted People
We have here two stories back-to-back, and I’m going to make two connections. First story: Jesus is on the road with his disciples, and he wants to be alone with them: he would not that any man should know where they were. Alone with his disciples, he predicts that he will be killed, and will […]
Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ
Today is a celebration about promises and the greatest promise of Jesus Christ – the promise of eternal life – beginning in the here and now but perfected after death. The great Archbishop Michael Ramsey used to teach that death was not an end but a new beginning and that the soul journeyed to God […]
Between God's D-Day and V-Day
A written transcript of Bishop Dietsche’s sermon is not available. However, you may listen via the recording available below.
Jeremiah on Truth and Hope
The world of the prophet Jeremiah was a world of disaster. Our first reading today was from the book of Jeremiah, about the prophet who lived in the traumatic sixth century BC. Specifically, he lived in that time period that saw the Babylonians crush Jerusalem not once or twice, but three times, in fifteen years, […]
Like a Mother Tending Her Children
In the last chapter of his book, the prophet Isaiah paints a beautiful picture. God is likened to a mother tending her children. Jerusalem is likened to a mother nursing her young, bearing them on her hip, dandling them upon her knee: a loving mother delighting in her children and the children thriving at the […]
The People of Ascensiontide
A written transcript of this sermon is not yet available. However you may listen to an audio file of the sermon below.
What the Magi Saw
Even though this, the feast of the Epiphany, marks the end of the Christmas season—the trees are down as you can see, the wrapping paper is put away, one’s true love has parted with the pipers piping and dancers dancing and so forth—we continue to hear what we think of as the Christmas story for […]
The Bread of Heaven
In the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we hear that Jesus has been accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, and, frankly, it’s not hard to see why. Jesus does many things in the Gospels, of course, but we sure do hear a lot about his eating in particular. And the people […]
