With a couple of baptisms and All Saints Day approaching, I thought that rather than having a formal sermon this morning, it would be good to walk through how our Eucharistic service is designed to speak to us, guiding both our worship and our lives.

I’ve been struggling with distractions lately. Noise and news and chaos and worry and fear keep pulling my attention in so many directions it’s hard to know where to look. Even today’s readings are loaded with them.

…parishioner and retired priest Dr. Henry Atkins spoke about how Francis might just be the most popular and admired saint in Church history. Unfortunately, he’s also probably the least imitated.

…for Jesus, saying the word “rich” involves invoking the name of a god.

Which do we actually love, our neighbor, or our property? Which do we spend our lives facing and to which are we turning our backs? Which dominates our lives and consumes our time, effort, energy, and focus?

In the Bible, a sinner isn’t simply “a person who sins,” as the dictionary defines the term. “Sinners” often included people who had been sinned against—victims of harm, whether intentional or circumstantial.

Although Philemon is one of the few New Testament Epistles addressed to an individual, it’s completely unique in that this letter offers no instruction but is, in its entirety, what we would understand as a private and personal request.

Humility is a challenging concept for us, in part because its existence, like Jesus’ statement about it, is itself a riddle, a paradox based in contradictory truths.

While it’s true that people behave in broadly similar patterns throughout time, we need to recognize that knowledge and understanding grow and change throughout the ages, meaning no one era or society is truly identical to another. Rejecting the reality of the differences and of developments over the course of history is not only foolish but allows vast amounts of opinion, propaganda, and straight up lies to masquerade as so-called “truth.”

Isaiah’s song is prophecy—not a prediction, but an admonishment laying bare societal-level instances of abuse, one that makes clear the consequences of what God will do with those who continue to refuse to address these core corruptions.

What we read in Hebrews isn’t a record of people who remained committed to their own isolated interpretations of reality despite mounting evidence against them. We see people who pledged themselves to God, who, despite repeated faults and failures, ultimately remained faithful to God’s character and desires.

…this morning, instead of a sermon, we’re going to have a family chat, of sorts, one in which we’re all going to have to deal with the parish priest not as a religious icon or authoritative figurehead or the tacit subject of everyone’s projected concerns but as a plain old, very raw, and very human being.

For centuries, the Church has both approached and sought to emulate God as the Great Individual—the mightiest and most authoritative Cosmic Power. We celebrate and demand others recognize in us virtues to which we have no right, lusting after omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, each of which we misinterpret…

What Paul’s asking is how it’s possible for the Galatians to have embraced God’s living Breath only to turn to bodily mutilation as a way to truly please God.

The Christ Cycle didn’t just unite the Realms, canceling fear of the unknown and liberating us to walk as the citizens of the Celestial Reign that we are and have always been. Pentecost demonstrates that God has shattered every single impediment that might divide us! Jesus did not come to be the ultimate drawbridge or portcullis…

It’s like we’ve been looking at with Revelation the past few weeks. Revelation may be prophecy—memorable imagery of patterns we humans continue to repeat throughout history and across cultures—but it isn’t prognostication. John never expected that we would use his words to fortune-tell or soothsay.

…there’s a subtheme sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible about a point when all this reverses. At that time, “cleanness” becomes dominant and begins pushing out defilement. Wastelands become lush fields. Fresh water somehow completely desalinates the Dead Sea. Even plates and utensils purify whatever touches them.

Despite the future-leaning language, the reality John speaks of is not something we still need to wait for. The one seated on the throne doesn’t actually say, “It is done.” They say, “It has become” or “It has happened.” The word reflects childbirth.

We in the Episcopal Church don’t often run into Revelation during our Sunday Lectionary cycle, but when we do, we have a nearly impossible task in trying to understand the book. With such a legacy of confusing and conflicting explanations and expectations, it’s no wonder so many people throughout history have wanted to pull it from the Bible.

…to comprehend…the significance of Easter…we need to look past our modern theologies and ideas of how the world works, beyond even that of the Reformation and Medieval eras. We need to remind ourselves of a long-forgotten universe, one that ruled human imagination for nearly all of history.