Category: Sunday Worship

Who helps you to be brave? Who inspires you and keeps you going? Who pushes you past your doubts and misgivings? Who sees your potential when you don’t see it for yourself? What surrounds you and upholds you? Is it a blanket knitted or sown by a great grandmother? Or a gift from a friend…

A son, barely older than a child, asks his father to break up his family’s property, to part with the memories and the sweat equity built into the land, to sell it, and then to give him his fair share: one-third of the proceeds, which he takes. And then, he summarily leaves, for another country,…

Today, we’re gathered for another service, one week since we last met together. It might not feel like this to you, but to me, it feels like a lot has happened over the course of the week: Social unrest, protests and vandalism at Tesla showrooms around the country, intimidation and censoring of universities,[i] the removal…

What do you cling to for peace of mind? Familiarity? Family (given and chosen)? Social connections? Do you find security in the customs and traditions observed by the people around you? Are you reassured when the language spoken is one you recognize because it is your first language as well? Do you feel confident because…

Earlier this week, faithful all around the world gathered together to share in communion and to put on ashes at the start of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a unique observance in the course of the church year. We get ready to go to church, just like any Sunday, but when we leave, we display our…

There was an early morning a decade ago now when my spouse and I packed our backpacks and stepped out onto the street before the sun rose. We walked to a bus depot and joined dozens of other travelers already waiting, and I gazed at the faint outlines of the mountains against the black, starless…

I think I’ve told you that Amy’s and my sons, Walker and Arthur, both have attended a Jewish preschool, in Baltimore and in Kensington, because in those places we felt confident that there they were safe, nurtured, and challenged to become who they are meant to be. Oftentimes, I found that I would worry for…

Gathering with you in this place is something I look forward to each week. The freedom and opportunity to sit with people in every moment of their uncertainty or grief, their tragedy and trauma, is central to my spirituality, because it helps me to understand God’s healing power, and our need for it. The challenge…

Youth are a gift. We mark their arrival with balloons and cakes, candles and presents. In Jesus’ day, it was prescribed in the Law of the people of God for parents to present a newborn boy in the Temple, and to be purified, and to celebrate, and to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Those who…

In the Gospel, Jesus proclaims a powerful new message, that tells of the kingdom of God, and his teaching draws attention from the crowd. It draws resistance from those unready to hear it, from people who want nothing to do with God and who are on the lookout for ways to poison those around them…