Today

 The sermon I gave today (posted earlier) was one of the shortest I've even given.

But I got over a dozen compliments and questions.

Maybe I preach too long.

Huh!

new way in

 You can email me!

I get in through Micrsoft Edge in a way I can do but don't understand.

Frustrating but do-able.

See you on email soon....

This week's sermon

 

June 9, 2024

        From time to time, I have heard people criticize Jesus’ actions in the Gospel you heard this morning.

        Some of the time they say he is disrespecting his family by not recognizing their presence.

        Other times they say “no one can be a brother or sister without sharing DNA.”

         

          Let me tell you a little about myself.

        I am an only child. My father was 40 and my mother was 37. I might have had bothers or sisters had my father not served in World War II until 18 months before I was born.

        Another thing—I was born into the Pilgrim Holiness Church. We left when I was 5 and became Methodists. Let me assure you that “mountain Methodists” in Southern West Virginia made Methodists in New England seem like high church Anglicans!

        Everyone in both those churches were called ‘bother’ or ‘sister’. I was ‘brother Jimmy’ until I went to college and found the Episcopal Church. My introduction was in a ‘house church’—no building to call it’s own.

        In fact, the ‘house church’ was the attic above our apartment in Morgantown after Bern and I were married after I received a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. We moved back there so Bern could finish her degree and I could be a social worker in child protection.

        The first time I was in a brick and mortar church was to be received into the Episcopal Church.

 

        But I assure you of this—the other members of that ‘house church’ WERE my brothers and sisters. It was them that convinced me to go back to seminary and be ordained. And lots of them attended my ordination.

        So, I fully understand what Jesus meant when he called the people in the room were his brothers and sisters and mother.

        The only member of the house church who was over 30 was a woman in her 80’s who was the first to tell me “go back to seminary, Jim. I mean it!”

        The people in all the churches I have served have been my brothers and sisters.

        And now it’s your turn.

        Thank you from the bottom of heart, my brothers and sisters in Christ.

        For an only child, I’ve had a lot of siblings….

        Thank you and Shalom.

Lost and Found

 Lost my email again!

Bern showed me how to get it back--and I did.

Today at Trinity we had a long conversation--after a short communion--about the guy who covers for me one Sunday a month.

He may not come back--surely won't.

We have to come up with a plan.

Don't have one yet.

Time will tell.

 

 

SHE DID IT!!!

 Bern got my internet back--my email, I mean.

I didn't ask how she did it since I wouldn't understand a word she said....

I had 134 messages and it took me half-an-hour to go through them, though most of them I didn't even open--just deleted.

So, email me if you want.

I may open it or delete it....

I still don't have interrnet

Try as I could, I couldn't get it back.

Bern will try tomorrow. She is a internet genius, compared to me--an internet dope.

We'll see.

I have 123 messages I can't see.

Most of them are garbage.

But some might matter.

We'll see tomorrow.

 

Today's sermon

 For the first time since being at Trinity, Milton, I preached without a manuscript.

I used to do it a lot--but as I got older I decided I should 'write it down' so I wouldn't forget something.

But today I knew the lessons so well that I knew what I wanted to say.

It started like this: "Sometimes God says to us: 'Pay attention!'"

Then I told the story from Samuel where God speaks to Samuel four times.

The first three times, the boy runs to his master, Eli, and says, "Here I am for you called me."

The first two times Eli tells him he didn't call him, to go back and go to sleep.

The third time, Eli says, "if he calls you again, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

That works.

The rest of the sermon was about God's call to us in the Psalm and in the Epistle.

Finally, in the Gospel from Mark, Jesus says, "The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath."

He is telling us that religion is to enlighten us to be the hands and voice and ears and energy of God in the world--not to be limited by religion or made a servant to religion.

I also ranted for a while about the Evangelicals who try to shame people into 'obeying' the church rather than 'being' the church.

But I'll leave that out here.