Author: Aaron

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (18A) – Matthew 13:13-21

Packing is hard. It’s a bigger task than I’d expected. At Christ Lutheran, we have a nice, three-bedroom parsonage just off of Maple Street, which is where I have been living for four and a half years. It’s a much bigger home than I have needed, and I promised myself I would not fill it with unnecessary possessions in the time I was here. You can guess how well that worked out. In less than a month, I will be moving all of my worldly goods into a dormitory room smaller than the size of this chancel. And so I’m finding I need to get rid of a few things.

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost (17-A) – Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

July is at a close, and for me, it’s been a weird month. I’ve been wapping things up and passing information on, having council retreats, personnel team conversations, an interview for the local paper, meeting about the bulletins and church website and youth ministry of these past years. Last shut-in visits, worship planning, ice cream with friends. The stress of the sad things I’ve been doing and the joyful things both has brought the disease of depression to the door after months of absence, but I’m coping. Today is my last Sunday preaching at Christ Lutheran, though I will of course be preaching twice in August at First Congregational in West Boylston, so it’s not really a last Sunday…? It’s been a weird month. And that was before I was summoned for jury duty.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (A) – Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Usually, when Jesus tells a story, we are left on our own to figure out what he means. Today’s story, though, is a notable exception. Jesus gives his own sermon on his parable. And I was thinking, “How can I improve on Jesus?” It’s not really possible. He’s already given his sermon, so you don’t really need one from me. But then, I thought: Visual aids! So I made a pie chart.

Easter 3(A) – Luke 24:13-35

When I graduated from High School, I was one of those lucky people who had been successful in discerning my future goals and career plans.  It had become so clear as a junior and senior, particularly thanks to the leadership of Mr. Weiss, a teacher with a goofy sense of humor who called all of his students “Chief,” I suspect, because he wasn’t very good with names—but who recognized my interest in the subject matter and made sure that interest was stimulated.  So by the time I entered college, I knew for certain:  I was going to be… a theoretical physicist.

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (A) – Matthew 5:21-37

I can remember hearing today’s Gospel passage when I was a child, and feeling very worried.  See, my brother and I had a very challenging relationship when we were little.  Which I suppose is probably pretty typical, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the acuteness of Jesus’ words for us.  Adam and I loved each other, of course, and we had our good moments.  But we were also two very different people.  I was the kind of child who couldn’t really spend more than thirty minutes doing one thing.  I know it’s hard to believe, but I was easily distracted, and my ability to really focus was minimal.  I would be done with whatever game we were playing long before he was.

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany (A) – 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

In what the world calls foolishness, there is godly power and wisdom.

I remember a certain homebound member visit I made back when I was on internship in Omaha.  Her name was Betty, an older woman who had just moved into one of those institutional settings for people who don’t have a lot of resources, the kind that looks shabby and is staffed with too few nurses and aides who are too busy to really provide the care their patients need.  I walked down the hall to the wing of the building in which she lived, and found I had to pass through locked doors.  This was the memory loss unit, something my internship supervisor hadn’t told me when she asked me to go.  I’d expected to sit down with a beloved member of the congregation and her all her stories about growing up in Omaha.  And now, I had no idea what to expect.

Christmas Day – John 1:1-14

On Wednesday night this past week, our Confirmation Class gathered to talk about the story of the Exodus, when the Israelites left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and traveled out into the desert toward the land God had promised them.  We heard how God gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, and how the Israelites began to put their worship life into place in the desert, building a movable temple and consecrating priests to serve God in this special place where he would come to visit them.  That notion of the temple as a thin place on earth, where God’s presence and glory comes to dwell among humankind, is a bit of an odd concept for Christians—at least at first glance.  For our students, it became even more strange when we noted that only consecrated priests were allowed to enter into the temple’s inner sanctum, the tabernacle.  Anyone else going there would die.

Reformation Sunday (Proper 26 C) – Isaiah 1:10-18

Sometimes you can do everything right and still get it wrong, you know?  I remember when we first had the idea of doing a worship service for young children over at Christ Lutheran.  I mentioned it to Bishop Hazelwood, who said, “Well, maybe you’d ought to find out what families’ needs are and address them first, and later you can do worship.”  I should have listened.  But that sounded like a lot of work, work I wasn’t really sure how to do, and I thought it made sense to do something I knew was possible rather than doing nothing because I wasn’t sure how to go about it.  So I began to study.  I read a whole bunch of books about Montessori and community-based Christian education.  I went for training and certification in early childhood music education.  I interviewed pastors of churches that were doing similar things, and wrapped some of their wild stabs in real theology to understand why we were doing what we were doing.  I took a class in the early childhood education department at Quinsigamond Community College.  I worked to come up with a brilliant worship plan, and hired the best musician in the county.  I even figured out how to advertise on Facebook.  And we had two.  On our best days, we had two children, both from the same household.  We never met our goals of reaching our nursery school families, of growing our congregations, of helping to make the congregation viable.  We did everything right, and we still got it wrong.

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost (C) – Luke 17:11-19

I’m not going to preach this week about current events, but there is one thing I can’t get away with ignoring.  For the sake of those people it effects, I can’t.  So, briefly:  When a person who aspires to be a major governmental leader is caught admitting to sexual assault, and we just see it as par for the course, something is very wrong.  I don’t mean what’s wrong with that person; that’s for another time and context.  I mean there is something very wrong with our nation.  To see rape as something normative is wrong.  And yet we as a society continue to let it happen:  One out of every three women in America has been the victim of some form of sexual assault.  And they are not alone; one out of every ten reported rape victims is male.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (26C) – Luke 16:19-31

I know a man, back in Pennsylvania where I grew up, who is dying of cancer.  He’s gone through a series of treatments, and is now on to some experimental chemotherapy, mostly because the previous treatments haven’t worked, not quite enough.  Somehow, he still has hope.  Yet he’s deeply hurt by family members who have liquidated his possessions, assuming he’s not going to survive.  They have stopped seeing him as a person, and begun seeing him as a victim, perhaps even as already dead.  It’s a messy family system, which helps to explain some of the strange behavior of these relatives—and he even understands why things are the way they are.  But it still hurts to not be seen as the person he is—now desperately poor, medical expenses having destroyed all his assets—but still a human being, having dignity, worthy of respect.