preached at St. Augustine’s Oak Cliff, May 31, 2020. First in-person service since March 8; outside
“All together in one place” — but we’re not all together. George Floyd isn’t here. Breonna Taylor isn’t here. Ahmaud Arbery isn’t here. Elnora’s Momma isn’t here — she’s died and gone to heaven, my friend Mike Boone isn’t here — he died in his sleep this past week at 35. And plenty more of our own stay at home to stay alive.
The mystery of this passage. Will we all be together in one place again?
Last week, I saw the Kingdom of Heaven on Rosemont Avenue.
That’s the name of the street where I live up in North Oak Cliff, and I want to offer a witness here this morning. The Kingdom of Heaven broke into the 600 block of North Rosemont Avenue, for a moment I glimpsed heaven there. Sure, it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, I smiled, and I nodded at how light and joyful a place the world could be. But it just as easily couldn’t have happened. It was just as possible, and maybe even easier, for nothing exceptional to have happened at all, for the Kingdom of Heaven to stay hidden and quiet and unseen, but there were two things that happened to enable this witness I’m giving you this morning.
First, somebody invited the Kingdom of Heaven to be part of their own daily life, and then second, somebody else saw and talked about what happened.
I heard the story from that witness, and now I share it with you. This neighbor had just gotten home from a long trip last Sunday night, and she found a note on her front door when she arrived: Continue reading
In a bit of a jab at my bishop and my diocesan communications director, who assigned an impossibly obtuse phrase of our Apostles Creed, I have composed on the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas blog a post which uses The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail as its primary texts to explicate this affirmation. find it HERE
The most important thing I learned in seminary is to come to other people and groups of people with compassion–put more simply–to interpret others charitably. Continue reading
A few months ago, I wrote that I’d never been drawn to pastoral work, which isn’t quite true. Growing up in the church, “pastor” meant “middle aged white man.” Continue reading
hope of things not seen 