Matthew 5:13-20 When we think of someone who we see as having a special goodness about them, we might describe them as “salt of the earth.” We mean that without these people, life would lose some of its flavor. Such people help remind us of what is important. They’re like sounding rods that keep us grounded in what’s real in life. Life is richer because of their presence.   We have heard that we are, as Jesus says during his Sermon on the Mount, “the salt of the earth” and “l

In 2016 I had the great fortune of taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Every moment of that trip was extraordinary but one of the highlights was going out on the Sea of Galilee in a boat that was made to replicate the one that Peter and Andrew would have been fishing on. Even though there was a local man demonstrating for us how they threw the nets off the side of the boat it felt authentic, not at all like a Disney version. I sat on the front edge of the boat and dangled m

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. This element of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount speaks to the core nature of what it means to be living in the world as the family of God. But Jesus wasn’t the only one to understand the importance of this core virtue in humanity. All great spiritual leaders speak of values that promote peace through compassion, love, and service to others and how that brings us closer to one another and to God, however you unde

Matthew 3:13-17   Ten years ago, in 2016, I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group of about 20 Episcopalians led by monks of the Society of St John the Evangelist, which is a monastery in Cambridge Massachusetts. It was the most amazing and inspiring trip I have ever made. Every day I was filled with awe as we entered the stories from the gospel. We walked on the field where Jesus gave the sermon on the mount, we sat at the well where he shared water with the Sama

Matthew 11. 2-11 / Luke 1. 46-55 The lessons from today’s teaching highlight the roles of two prophets in the Jesus story during this time of Advent. From the Gospel of Matthew, we have Jesus proclaiming the greatness of John the Baptist – the voice crying out in the wilderness – and his prophetic role of preparing the way for the incarnation of God in Jesus.   It was from the wilderness that God chose to announce that God’s reign of justice and peace was coming in the form o

ADVENT / CHRISTMAS 2025     “What if we close our eyes right now and are interiorly awakened so that when we opened our eyes, we would see through our own awakened eyes what Jesus saw in all that he saw. What would we see? We would see God. Because Jesus saw God in all that he saw.    What is stunning is that it didn’t matter if Jesus saw his own mother or a prostitute. It didn’t matter whether he saw the joy of those gathered at a wedding or the sorrow of the burial of a lov

As we move toward the Holy Nativity and Christmas, we hear stories of John the Baptist, Mary, the Archangel Gabriel, the dream of Joseph, the journey to Bethlehem, and the mystic stargazers from the East. We are given rich opportunities to anticipate the coming of Jesus and reflect on what it all means in our lives.    The Advent stories are part of the belief narrative that Christ has come and will come again. It is a narrative that looks both to the past and to the future b

John 18. 33-38 This scriptural account of the exchange between Jesus and Pilot feels fitting in that it speaks of kings and of truth, both of which are relevant to the times in which we live. Ours is a time when many people are resisting the desire of the one who seems thirsty for power and eager to wear the crown of a king. This is also a time when there are big questions about what is truth.    I have learned that scripture does not have all the answers but instead filled w