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Showing posts from July, 2010

Opening the door to God

I recently saw the movie “Salt”, starring Angelina Jolie. There is significant portion of the movie that was filmed at St. Bart’s in New York, the Episcopal Church we sent a delegation to for their annual conference a few years ago. It was actually the first time I had been able to see inside that Church, and what a cool looking church it is. I also received an email from Bill Tully, because I am on the mailing list, not because I know him, where he explained how it came to be that Salt was filmed in the Church. He closed his email with a poignant statement, “Opening the door for God is a privilege and a challenge, the very heart of our ministry, every day. That's the way of God's world, filled with vocation, opportunity - - and yes, temptation.” What does opening that door look like for you and for me? Is it vulnerability? Is it simple openness? Is it centered around justice? What does it look like in order to take the privilege and the challenge to open the door to G

Sermon by the Vicar, July 25, 8 & 10am

It is not often I am compared to, by the God I consider the source of all, the source of my life, it is not often I am, by the God I love, compared to a prostitute. And yet that is exactly what is happening in today’s Hosea reading. It is easy for us to extrapolate this out as a story about a prophet from long ago, a man who was called by God, but whose presence today is insignificant and impotent. But we cannot see the prophet Hosea in such a light, we must see his powerful actions in the light God meant us to see these words. To render these characters simply to the imagination cheapens the Good News of a Gospel that transforms all of human kind centuries later. The time of Hosea was difficult, God had delivered the Israelites from certain doom, from the slavery of Baal, God had offered up God’s self in service, in love and had done much for God’s chosen people. The people then, repaid God by having, as it says later in the book of Hosea, “No faith in the land”. This lack of fa