October 22th 2017 Pentecost 20A Several years ago I was serving as the over-night on-call chaplain at the hospital in Columbia, SC and at around 11pm I received a page to go to the psychiatric ward. The gentleman who had me paged was a very interesting man. He was worried that night, mostly about something…
Baptism of Our Lord Year C Isaiah 43:1-7 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 One of the interesting things I noticed when I became a Lutheran some years ago was the amount of time people spent talking about baptism. ‘Remember your baptism’ was a phrase unfamiliar to me but commonly on the lips of the Lutheran pastors I…
Lent 1B Genesis 9:8-17 Our reading today from the Old Testament is the closing scene of one of the most widely recognized stories from the bible. The flood, the big boat, the animals two by two, the kindly looking old man with the long white beard are all familiar set pieces in this story. And…
It is always a remarkable moment to stand here and see all of you looking back at me with the dark, cross-shaped smudges on your foreheads. It is like holding up the bread and wine at communion and seeing, in a sense, the people of God through communion; to see the body of Christ amongst…
This is an excerpt from the new Special Edition Newsletter focusing on water, including water in the scriptures, environmental concerns and stewardship. The full newsletter (with active links) may be downloaded here. Joined into one family through the waters of baptism…. Why Water? Why spend all this time and energy on water? Well, there are…
Shepherdess Writes 