19th Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ August 12, 2012 ~ 1 Kings 19:4-8; Eph 4:25-5:2; Jn 6:35, 41-51 We are what we eat. The more like God we want to be, the more we need to nourish ourselves with God, any way that we can. That’s why we’re here this morning. What do we feed on the rest of the week? Too often, we indulge in spiritual junk food: sensationalist media, gossip, judgmental conversations (which are no less judgmental if our judgments happen to be true…… if, indeed, any thought that judges a created being can be true in the …
Libby Caes' Homily from July 15, 2012
Holy Wisdom Monastery, July 15, 2012 Amos 7.7-15; Psalm 85: 8 ff.; Eph. 1:3-14; Mark 6: 14-29 Since Easter one of my challenges has been balance. If you were to hold a plumb line (open the straight line) next to me when I am standing with my eyes closed and feet close together, you would notice that I sway a bit. A plumb line is a string with a weight at the bottom of it. Similar to this straight line which my husband Dave uses to mark a straight line before cutting drywall. But plumb lines are not used on …
Jim Penczykowski's Homily from July 8, 2012
Jesus’ identity as Messiah is misunderstood by the religious leaders, by the crowds, and by his own family of origin and hometown neighbors. Our passage concludes one portion of Mark’s Gospel and begins another portion. At the beginning of the portion devoted to the twelve we see them cast in a fairly positive light, Jesus sending them out to proclaim that all should repent. In the chapters to follow, the twelve are just as clueless as the Pharisees and the citizens of Nazareth. They do not understand Jesus as the messiah sent by God. Much of what we hear proclaimed …
Colleen Hartung's Homily from June 24, 2012
Practical Faith in the Face of the Storm Mark 4: 35-41 June 24, 2012 In today’s readings, a fierce gale and punishing waves, a voice from a terrifying whirlwind and a frustrated evangelist cause us to ponder some hard questions about faith and discipleship. In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples cower before raging winds causing Jesus to ask them, “Have you no faith?” In the reading from the Book of Job, Job dares the question of justice and fairness in the face of incomprehensible loss causing God to issue a demand from the heart of a whirlwind, “hitch up …
Patti LaCross' Homily from June 3, 2012
What a wonderful gathering of people we have today under this soaring roof! The Holy Spirit has worked some amazing things to bring us together today. Acknowledging that Spirit, please look around you, and quickly introduce yourself to anyone sitting near you whose name you don’t know. It would be really awkward to get adopted and expect to be a family with people whose names you didn’t even know, right? Since our Sunday worship assembly is growing steadily, we really need to work at getting to know one another, because we are called to be a family of faith. Did you catch that word adoption …
Leora Weitzman's Homily from May 27, 2012
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 …