Tag: faith
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The First Sunday of Advent
Year A – November 30, 2025 Note: I am beginning a series of blogging on the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary—the Revised Common Lectionary as used in the Episcopal Church—paired with artwork. This project has its origins in bulletins I used to make for St. Andrew’s Church, Livonia, although I wrote much…
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Bearing Scars and Good News
Homily for the Feast of St. Luke (observed), Evensong, 10/19/2025Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit (detroitcathedral.org) This morning we observed yesterday’s feast of St. Luke, and we continue that observance this evening. St. Luke’s day has long been important in this cathedral—which is why we can move it to a…
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The Lord is risen indeed!
Alleluia! Something truly unprecedented has happened. God has become human: fully human and fully divine. I don’t know what that means, exactly. It’s unprecedented. Then, this God-man died. Men—well, people of all genders, and also all living things—die all the time. But God? It’s unprecedented. Now he’s back. And honestly?…
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Hopelessness and Holy Saturday
God is dead. This year in particular, many of us don’t have to really stretch to put ourselves in the mindset of the profound hopelessness Jesus’ follwers must have been feeling the day after Jesus died. There was nothing to do but mourn, except maybe to hide just in case…
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A hill I would probably die on
Did God abandon Jesus on the cross? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? This saying of Jesus on the cross is referred to as his “cry of dereliction.” Dereliction, of course, means abandonment. Many Christians rightly find deep consolation in this: Jesus felt God-forsaken, as we often…
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Some unpolished thoughts on Maundy Thursday
Ideally, I’d have written this post yesterday and posted it early today; but I’m late. On the plus side, I can share what I heard in tonight’s gospel lection while I was at church. Here’s the part that struck me: And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given…
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Whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory?
Holy Week is here again: that annual liturgical reminder of the horrors humans are capable of. We tame it—make it about the provision of a meek and mute divine sacrificial victim to atone for our personal sins. It’s such a familiar story. Our hymnals automatically flip themselves open to “All…
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I disagree with myself ALL THE TIME.
In grad school, I attended an inter-religious consortium of seminaries and institutes. One term while taking a class over at the Unitarian Universalist seminary, I recall telling a UU classmate that I am a “Trinitarian Universalist.” That might well be a fancy way to say “Episcopalian,” although I doubt it.…
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Lift Every Voice for Charleston
I have a friend who believes the correct response to whatever befalls a community of faith is: “What, then, shall we sing?” This morning in church, many of us throughout the United States joined in solidarity with the congregation at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC by…
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The Spirit of Detroit and Christian Hope
The Detroit city motto has become better known in recent years, thanks to the proliferation of books—about the city’s history, and, yes, about the ruins, by authors who live in the Metro Area and love the city—and of merchandise such as bookbags, t-shirts, postcards, and other items you might find…
The Sound 