Tag: Sermon

Up there, down here

A homily for the Ascension of the Lord, May 21, 2023

Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mt 28:16-20

Years ago, I visited friends in Colorado Springs and Casper, Wyoming, taking a nonstop flight first to Denver and then a short hop from there to Colorado and back to Denver, and to Wyoming and back to Denver for my flight home. It was my first time west of Ohio.

En route to the Springs, the 737 flew above the Rocky Mountaintops, which were hugged by clouds, and I gasped. At first glance, I was convinced I had seen a city in the sky, the unfiltered sun glistening on the snowcaps and the crags looking like palaces and temples and skyscrapers.

Nature’s skyscrapers. And so they were.

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Speaking louder, gently

A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2023

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17, 1 Pt 3:15-18, Jn 14:15-21

I’d like to start with a story about what not to do.

Right after my college graduation, my then-girlfriend and I went to a concert in New York’s Central Park and, after it was over, we headed on foot to her apartment. We were waiting at a street corner for the light to change when she grabbed my arm, leaned closer to me, and shook her head in the direction of a man who was sort of shuffling his way toward us while trying not to make eye contact.

“Bill, that guy looks like a mugger,” she said, and for some bizarre reason I barked back, “Stay here.”

I grabbed the program from the show out of my coat pocket and walked briskly toward the man, waving the paper and saying, “Do you know Jesus? Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior. I have a tract right here that…”

He took off like a shot.

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The GOAT was a shepherd

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023

Acts 2:14a, 36-41, 1 Pt 2:20b-25, Jn 10:1-10

The genius Bill Watterson, father of the long-missed “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip, had his characters invent Calvinball after mischievous boy Calvin grew tired of so-called organized sports. Instead, Calvin cobbled together the first truly disorganized or unorganized sport, a sport with only one rule and a mishmash of sporting goods that may or may not be suitable for use.

The one permanent rule in Calvinball dictated that players could not play it the same way twice. The game involved croquet wickets and mallets, volleyballs, basketballs, gloves, bare hands, goggles, and anything else that seemed remotely sporty or otherwise preposterous.

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Eye drops

A homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023

Acts 2:14, 22-33, 1 Pt 1:17-21, Lk 24:13-35

I watch a fair amount of cable TV, primarily news, and with the programming come the unavoidable commercials, mostly for medicines and the like. You know the ones: They start off by listing the one or two benefits of that particular snake oil and then rattle off the 10,000 possible side effects that include painful death or dismemberment, significant gain or loss of weight, or terminal halitosis.

(And have you ever noticed that the actors playing some of these couples’ children are biologically inaccurate, if not impossible?)

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See, then do

A homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 16, 2023

Acts 2:42-47, 1 Pt 1:3-9, Jn 20:19-31

One of the many great advantages of having a doctor as my dad was the supply of free copies of Highlights for Children magazine that piled up in his waiting room, alongside ancient Time, Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest relics. It was heaven for a voracious reader like me.

Back then, as I recall, Highlights had a feature called “Tommy the Talker and Danny the Doer.” And if it wasn’t a Highlights feature, Tommy vs. Danny appeared somewhere. So let’s go with it.

Continue reading See, then do

Keep X in Easter

A homily for the Resurrection of the Lord (Easter), April 9, 2023

Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

We Americans celebrate holidays oddly, especially holidays with religious roots.

By one measure — how much money we spend to celebrate — Christmas is way up there. The winter holidays, as retailers refer to the season, are worth three times all the other holidays combined. Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, in some places overlapping the tail end of BTS (back to school, not K-pop) and overshadowing Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Halloween is no slouch in the retail advertising world, though, and supermarket chains go all out for Turkey Day.

But there’s no mega-blitz of TV commercials for Easter, Cadbury bunny auditions notwithstanding.

And that’s perfect.

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Hop in, Lord

A homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, April 2, 2023

Mt 21:1-11, Is 50:4-7, Phil 2:6-11, Mt 26:14—27:66

Some spring morning early in the second half of the 20th century, the fourth- or fifth-graders (I forget which …) at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft had an assignment: If you invented a time machine that took you back to Jerusalem in 33 A.D. and saw Jesus along the Way of the Cross, what would you do?

The answers — most of them illustrated as best as we Warhol wannabes could — ran a wide gamut as we each stood up and presented them to the class.

Some of my classmates insisted they would snatch the cross from our Messiah and take his place on Golgotha. Some said they would comfort him as he walked past, offering him water and snacks. Some promised to be yet another Simon of Cyrene.

I guess my answer was Cyrenian, sort of.

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To life

A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 26, 2023

Ez 37:12-14, Rom 8:8-11, Jn 11:1-45

In one of the big production numbers in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye the milkman and wedding guests get rowdy and sing l’chaim — to life!

To life, to life, l’chaim.
L’chaim, l’chaim, to life.
Life has a way of confusing us,
Blessing and bruising us.
Drink, l’chaim, to life!

Every day, most of us raise a glass of something — wine, coffee, Gatorade, water — to life.

We’re grateful for a new day, another day, and we’re grateful for the people, places and things in our lives. Grateful to be sharing the day with them.

We’re grateful to be on this side of the daisies, as the sassy expression goes.

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Embossed

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 19, 2023

1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41

Every place I’ve ever lived had shelves full of books, sometimes to the point of making the floorboards creak or sag.

When my Uncle Richard lived with us, my dad bought him a set of paperbacks that Time-Life considered to be the essential modern literature. I remember one being the “Ox-Box Incident,” which even to this day I have yet to read. The other essentials? Long forgotten. Shame on me.

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H 2 … Oh!

A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2023

Ex 17:3-7, Rom 5:1-2, 5-8, Jn 4:5-42

Water has been in the news a lot lately.

California has too much of it — in the form of unimaginably deep snow as well as downpours that would have challenged Noah — even as the state’s drought has yet to be solved.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up because the rivers that flow into it are drying up, and scientists and politicians are trying to engineer a way to save it.

Closer to home, March is coming in like a lion after a warm and dry winter. Slush and rain and flooded roads.

Yes, water has been newsworthy a lot lately.

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