Last Sunday, Father Spencer spoke movingly and poignantly about the struggle that he, and many of us, have experienced during this period of lockdown, and how it simply doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. A few days later, preaching at the Saturday monthly requiem, Fr. Spencer with that same honesty, shared how as […]
Sermon Topic: Redemption
From Dust to Glory
Our Lenten journey begins with a simple yet dramatic symbolic action; ashes, placed on our foreheads in the sign of the cross.
My wellbeloved hath a vineyard
Once, in another place, some friends of mine and I planted a garden in a field that had been sown with Bermuda grass. Bermuda grass doesn’t just spring up like a blade, it spreads out like a vine covered with blades and becomes a thick tangled carpet of grass. If you want a thick and […]
In the beginning...
When we celebrate Christmas we look back, but further back than the brightly lit night in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago. “In the beginning” are the first words of John’s Gospel. The reading that completes our annual Festival of Lessons and Carols takes us back to the very beginning of time. “In the beginning.” These […]
The blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things.
The passage that was read to us from the Epistle to the Hebrews mentions five figures from the Old Testament, three of them are people Abel, Esau and Moses, and two of them are Mountains, Sinai and Zion. Cain murdered his brother Abel. When God confronted Cain with his crime, the Lord said that Abel’s […]
We may speak much, and yet come short: wherefore in sum, he is all.
There have been numerous attempts to find ways of teaching about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; the shamrock or three-leaved clover, being the favored symbol in many an Irish pulpit. I have heard the chemical formula for water, H2O, a molecule with three atoms also used. There was a priest back in Yorkshire who […]
No more Advents, please?
The more time passes the more I love Advent more than any other season of the church year. But the more time passes the more prepared I am never to observe another Advent season again. It seems there are only two Advents that are of any consequence, and these two are essential to our understanding […]
Worthy is the Lamb that was Slain
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Today at Saint Thomas we are celebrating St. Michael and All Angels, in anticipation of its feast day on Tuesday, the appointed date in the Church calendar. Saint Michael himself has pride of place on this day, as the leader of God’s […]
Human Weakness: Divine Power
The two women in today’s bible readings from the Old Testament and the Gospels must have been desperate. The widow of Zarephath and the widow of Nain were already unfortunate women; by being widows they had become part of one of the poorest classes in Israel’s society. What stopped them from sinking into abject poverty […]
The Lord Shall Fight for You
Moses asked many times in the name of the Lord for Pharaoh to release the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt. And more than once Pharaoh replied, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? I do not know this Lord; neither will I let Israel go.” It took a lot of […]
