November 21, 2010

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 46
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43

The year is 1925, and Pius XI, Bishop of Rome, is deeply alarmed. World War I, the supposed war to end all wars, has been over for only seven-and-a-half years but in the estimation of Pope Pius the seeds of another, even worse conflict are already being sown. Dark and bitter nationalism is rising in country after country. Leaders pander to the increasing desires of their peoples for wealth, power, and world supremacy. And the philosophical moment has crowned the individual person with the imagined right to assert her- or him-self as sovereign over all others. Pius, as the world shall too soon learn, is correct in his assessment of the situation: the lust after earthly power will soon drag the whole world into an unprecedented state of war and chaos. What the Bishop of Rome desires is that all nations and people see in Christ a different sort of power – a different way of being in the world, and so he establishes the Feast of Christ the King, an observance eventually adopted by the Lutheran and Anglican communions as well as by the United Methodist, Presbyterian, and Moravian churches.

November 14, 2010

Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Temples tumble and human enterprises fall – be they in Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Common Era or in New York City on a September morning in the year 2001 or on Wall Street in whatever year that debacle began or came into the fullness of light. A new millennium rises from the wreckage of that calamitous Twentieth Century but the hope that we will learn war no more is, in this country, dashed to pieces – though in many, if not most places that hope never was at all. And the earth shakes and rolls and the ruins of cities become the sepulchers of the good and the not-so-good alike. Hurricanes come ashore and levees break, torrential rains wash down from the hills, and the-time-of-cholera is once more. Refugee camps grow larger and polar ice shrinks and everywhere on any day good people, even the best, suffer, and even innocent children sicken and die. Meanwhile, south of the border, no one is safe, the death toll keeps on climbing, the drug cartels grow more brazen and well-armed, and no one knows how to stop the madness. And in a land once called “holy” the children of common ancestors contend in an unholy state of territorial warfare. What, dear God, is the meaning of all this?!?!?

November 7, 2010

Job 19:23-27a
Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

The homily on All Saints Day was delivered by Jeri Rodrick.