-Lady-

There is an elegance in saying “Lady.” I like pronouncing the word as if it were a chocolate ready to melt, gum your fingers, and chemically change your mood. Lady has a dignity, and it is allowed to eat ice cream in front of Matlock while sweats wearing if it wants to. Some people say the word “woman,” and they mean it like some lemon lozenge in your throat stopping you from coughing: *girlgirlgirl* Or sometimes woman is prescribed in italics: woman. It can be a migraine itself, woman. Said like “get behind me nurse.” Then there is “female.” That prickly-clean paper crumpling of the doctor’s chairbed creasing your thigh and that notcovering gown. Female is ready to see you now, It peers over a clipboard and looks about to give...

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Sermon in Lent 1B- Comfort in the Wilderness.

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today on the first day of Lent we hear again about Jesus’ baptism. Now if you were to look at baptisms we do here at Trinity, you might expect Jesus to celebrate afterward. We light special candles, give you presents, and there’s even a tiny parade where we introduce you to all the smiling faces of the community that promises to nurture you in faith. We warn you about the choir. We welcome you into the Lord’s family. We take pictures. We may even clap and cheer! But in our Gospel story today, Jesus does not go home and take a nap after his baptism, nor does he go to celebrate afterward by having lunch at the Red Plate Diner with his family. There’s no feast, no...

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Sermon on Epiphany 3b- Repentance

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Imagine with me a boy on a typical day in High School. His backpack balloons out from his back like a bag of cement. Locker doors are shuddering on their hinges as kids haplessly throw books into their metallic bottoms. It could be lunchtime, and the smell of overmoist bread, mustard, and salami wafts through the air. Now there’s also a particular girl who this boy is pining after. He thinks he’s in love. We’ll call her Jenny. He’s been sitting Jenny’s at lunch table for several weeks in a row. Today he finds out from listening to her conversation, that Jenny really likes this band called Third Eye Blind. It seems to be all that she can talk about, and this song...

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Qoheleth Chapter Nine

Translation from the Anchor Bible commentary by R.B.Y. Scott 9 1So I thought about all I had observed—that just and wise men and what they do are in God’s power; whether he will favor them or not, no one knows. Anything may happen to anyone; 2 the same chance befalls the innocent and the guilty, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, the one who brings a sacrifice and the one who does not. As it is with the virtuous, so it is with the sinner; as with the one who swears, so with him who is afraid to swear. 3 This is the worst of all the things that happen under the sun—that all meet the same fate. That is why men’s minds are full of evil, and madness is in their minds while they live—because their only future is to die. 4 It is true that “while one is...

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Sermon For the First Sunday of Christmas aka. “Intern Sunday”

Luther’s Prayer for Before a Sermon: “Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, give us your Holy Spirit who writes the preached Word into our hearts. May we receive and believe it and be cheered by it in eternity. Glorify your Word in our hearts and make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it, through your Holy Spirit think what is right, and by your power fulfill the Word, for the Sake of Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. Amen.” Luke 2:22-40. So what’s left? The presents are open, our stockings lie rumpled and bunched a corner. The lights are out and our houses in post-party disorder. We cooked the goose, turned all festivities loose. The Fahoo forays and dahoo dorays have all been sung. Children are sluggish with...

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Sermonett/Advent 2 Reflection- John 1:1-5

Last week for Advent Fellowship night, I told you a story about my last bit of walking along the Appalachian Trail. This week, I would like to share with you a story about a different kind of advent walking. One of the floors that I was in charge of during my summer as a hospital chaplain in Richmond Virginia, was the bone marrow transplant floor. It was a floor nicknamed by the staff as the “hopeless floor.” If there ever was a floor in the hospital that had beds just for darkness, it may be that floor. They called it the hopeless floor, because a majority of patients that get bone-marrow transplants are at the end of their ropes. They have already tried dozens of treatments, and this is often a floor of last gasps. Now, there was a woman on this floor who paged...

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Sermonett/Advent 1 Reflection- Romans 5:1-6

It is a chilly night in Maine on September 20th. The sky is clear, a few early leaves are floating down from the trees. The stars are out, and shivering with thoughts about autumn. I cannot sleep, the boards of the lean-to shelter seem to toss and turn as much as I do. I have hiked 2,166 miles along the Appalachian Trail over mountains, through farms, across rivers, over rocks, over roots, and under trees from Georgia all the way up to the heart of Maine. I have pressed on through snow, mud, rain, hail, thunder, bears, moose droppings, hunger, blisters, heat, and cold. Now there are only ten miles left between me and Mount Katahdin. One more day of hiking, one more mountain to climb, and I can say I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. I had waited, working and...

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