Pentecost * Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27 & 16:4b-15 * Leora Weitzman * May 27, 2012 The homily resource books in our library here gave me some much needed help with part of today’s Gospel. The lines about sin and righteousness and judgment can be retranslated to reveal a courtroom metaphor regarding a crime, the nature of justice, and the verdict. In the case of Jesus, the Advocate turns the world’s perspective on its head. Where the world saw an enemy of the state tried, found guilty, and executed, the Spirit sees something else. It sees a friend of …
Bill Conover's Eulogy at Memorial Service for Edwin Beers
Not long after Ed became my spiritual director, in the late 1990s, we both attended a clergy meeting here on these very grounds. The late William Sloane Coffin, one of the Church’s lions for justice and nonviolence, was speaking of wealth. “There are two ways you can be rich,” said Bill Coffin, “Have a lot of money, or have few needs.” Ed understood this insight implicitly; he’d long before chosen the latter path of simplicity, a sturdy, gentle, God-trusting, Benedictine way of being in the world. But there was so much more to Ed’s vast wealth. His treasure was a …
Joe Wiesenfarth's Homily from the Memorial Service for Edwin Beers on May 4, 2012
Romans 14:7-9, Hebrews 11:8-16, Luke 24:13-35 Memorial Service for Edwin E. Beers Ed Beers and I had for some years given each other copies of our homilies when we asked for them. In sorting through his that I have on file, I found one dated 25 October 1987. Some other few were not dated, but I think that 25 years suggest our long friendship. It takes Ed back to the time that he surprised me by telling me that he had been shooting hoops on a UW Natatorium basketball court with friends who regularly gathered there, and it takes me …
Joe Wiesenfarth's Homily from April 29, 2012
April 29, 2012 Acts 4:5-12, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18 Of the years of my life, I have lived all but one in cities: New York, Washington, D. C., Detroit, London, Freiburg, Bologna, and Madison, of course, longest of all. Consequently, I am unqualified to talk about shepherds and sheep. All that I know about both I learned from reading Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd. But in the crunch, I find that novels are better on donkeys than on sheep. I know because I met a donkey once when driving through the English countryside. He was not …
Libby and Dave Caes' Homily from April 15, 2012
April 15, first Sunday in Easter Acts 4:32-35 I should probably begin with an apology to those of you who were hoping to hear Libby this morning. You may have noticed that she is not here. On Thursday she was diagnosed with labyrinthitis. I know it sounds like one of those diseases that only spiritual giants get—something like tripping in a moment of spiritual ecstasy while navigating a labyrinth—but really it is a swelling in the labyrinth of small channels in your inner ear. It wrecks havoc with someone’s equilibrium. Anyway, I agreed to read her homily, although there are …
Sister Lynne Smith's Easter Vigil Homily from April 7, 2012
Easter Vigil, April 7, 2012 Mark 16:1-8 Scholars believe that this reading from Mark’s Gospel is the original ending of the gospel. It seems an unlikely ending for the good news of Jesus Christ. Since the women remained at the cross we might think they would grasp the resurrection when it is announced to them. However, their fear, terror and amazement get the better of them and they too flee. Not an auspicious ending to the good news, but it does reflect our common human response to suffering, uncertainty and the unknown. We can sympathize with the women. Our own …
Joe Wiesenfarth's Palm Sunday Homily from April 1, 2012
April 1, 2012 – Palm Sunday Mark 14:1 – 15:47 The relentless development of the gospel story from Gethsemani to Golgotha is shaped by two constant motifs: inevitability: what is shown as happening must happen; and brutality: man is to man a wolf—homo homini lupus, as Plautus said some three centuries before the brutal events the gospel relates took place. Jesus himself announces the motif of inevitability. He knows that his disciples will deny and betray him. And Peter and Judas dramatically prove him right. Brutality then quickly becomes reality. The characters who enact these motifs are revealed as inevitably craven, avaricious, …
Colleen Hartung's Homily from March 18, 2012, Fourth Sunday in Lent
This is the 4th Sunday of Lent. Two weeks from today is Palm Sunday and so it is to be expected that with today’s readings, we are into the thick of things when it comes to sin, punishment and the possibility of redemption. So let us start with the sins and punishments. Paul simply calls these sins passion of the flesh and through these trespasses we are dead, at least figuratively. Things are a little less clear and a little more complicated in the Book of Numbers and the Gospel of John. In the reading from the Book of Numbers, …
Patti LaCross' Homily from March 11, 2012
3rd Sunday of Lent, March 11, 2012 Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinth 1:18-25, John 2:13-22 I am very grateful to be here with you this morning, and for our listening together in the silence. I believe that this beautiful thing we share as One—the Word and Eucharist—deeply changes how we listen and observe, and how we walk in the world outside these windows. In my daily life I move around a lot—my job with the Madison schools is now truly itinerant. I also read and I talk a lot, and I eat—a lot! And I do most of these things rather fast. I’m not sure …
Wayne Sigelko's Homily from March 4, 2012, the Second Sunday of Lent
JESUS’ REARRANGEMENT THEOREM When Lynne asked for a volunteer to preach this morning, I looked at my calendar, saw that today was open, and said ok. Then, after I had agreed to do it, I read the readings she had included, especially the one from Genesis and thought, “Oh, crud.” I have to admit that I am incredibly uncomfortable with Covenant Theology. And, no, my difficulties are not about pre- vs. post- vs. a- millennialism. Frankly, I’m just not that deep a thinker. My problem with Covenant Theology is simply this, “If we’re God’s chosen people, then who the hell are they?” All too often in history, the answer has been simple. They are the …