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Proper 8, Year A 2026: Genesis 22:1-14

My husband plays a lot of video games. One of his favorites is actually called The Binding of Isaac . The game takes the raw, harrowing themes of the biblical narrative we read today from Genesis and uses them to construct a dark allegory about religious trauma, childhood isolation, and guilt. The game mirrors the structure of the biblical text perfectly in its opening, only to subvert its meaning entirely to reveal a tragic reality. It’s a game that you can play all the way through in about half an hour, once you know what you’re doing, so I have heard the opening line, “Isaac and his mother” about a million times. The game’s cinematic intro directly references Genesis 22, mapping the biblical figures onto a broken, modern household where Isaac and his mother live alone in a small house on a hill. Isaac draws pictures and plays with toys while Mom watches Christian broadcasts on television. A voice from above (implied to be God, mimicking the test of Abraham) speaks to Mom, demanding ...
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Proper 7 Year A 2026: Genesis 21:8-21

In the movie Dogma , the main character Bethany is sent on a mission from God. Bethany does not want this mission. And as she tells her story of why she isn’t interested in what God wants from her - even as she is on the mission she continues to resist  - she shares her grievances. To combine a couple of exchanges for clarity, she asks, “when the doctor botched my procedure leaving me unable to have children, where was God? And when my husband decided he didn’t want to be with a woman who couldn’t carry his children, where was God?” and while she was going through her divorce, her mother said to her, “Bethany, God has a plan,” to which she responded, “What about my plans? Weren’t my plans good enough for God?” It’s been many years since I last watched Dogma , but that scene has stuck with me. Not because her mother’s response, while intended to comfort, ended up causing her more pain - something we have all experienced as both the well-intended giver and receiver. What struck me is...
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Proper 6 Year A 2026: Genesis 18:1-15

My colleague Pastor Jill Williams is the rector of St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Ocean City, Maryland. Her parish is preparing to file a federal lawsuit against the city for attempting to shut down their overnight shelter for unhoused people. The fight began last year when Ocean City passed an ordinance making sleeping in public spaces punishable by jail time. St. Paul’s shelter operates from 7pm to 7am and houses about 27 people every night. The ministry, which is mostly funded by donations and the congregation, also offers dinner and breakfast, and helps overnight guests access other resources, such as substance abuse programs and affordable housing assistance. To quote Pastor Jill, “Every evening our doors open to people who need safety, dignity and hope. We believe that serving our neighbors in this way is part of our calling as a church, and we remain committed to that work.” Last week, when the city arrived at St. Paul’s by-the-Sea to issue their fine, Pastor Jill rea...
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Proper 5 Year A 2026: Matthew 9:9-13,18-25

When my brother and I were tweens, we had an uncanny knack of getting grounded over stupid choices. We weren’t dangerous, just dumb. After a day or two of our sentence, sometimes my mom would approach us and offer clemency. She wanted to show us that although we made mistakes, she believed in our ability to be better. In verse 13 of today's lesson from Matthew, Jesus tells the Pharisees to “go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ This instruction was so important to Jesus that in chapter 12 he tells the pharisees they would have behaved differently “if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” Jesus is throwing shade at the Pharisees. Telling Pharisees to learn what the Prophets mean is like when an eight year old corrects their teacher. They know. So what point is Jesus making? We are reading in English what Matthew wrote in Greek. Jesus probably spoke Aramaic, day to day, but this quote from the prophet Hosea, which is where “I desire...
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Pentecost, Year A 2026: John 20:19-23

As a priest, when you move from a parish you’re not really supposed to have contact with laypeople from that parish for a year. The point is to help the priest move on to their next call and the people transition to whoever the new pastoral leader is in their parish. This is a rule I followed when leaving Grace and St. Stephen’s to come to St. Matthew’s with one exception: Dan. He’s the exception not only because we’re in a fantasy baseball league together, but because Dan is a postulant for holy orders. In three years he will be a priest, and we will officially be colleagues. So he and I text from time to time, and this past week we were texting about preaching. The next Sunday Dan is scheduled to preach contains the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. And Dan texted me - after bemoaning a bad add/drop in fantasy baseball - “I’m trying really hard to resist the first-semester-seminarian impulse to say something “new” about (the feeding of the 5000)”. But to be fair to Dan, and to all fir...
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Ascension Day, Year A 2026: Luke 24:44-53

My six-year-old daughter really wants to be a grown up. And from her perspective, I can see the appeal. Grown-ups make all the rules. We get to stay up later. And we are constantly telling her to enjoy being six. But it’s hard for her to wait. And, the bad news for her, is that waiting won’t get easier when she does become a “grown up”, whenever that happens. But we also remind her that she has so much cool stuff to do in the meantime. So many fun games to play, so much to learn, so many books to read. While she has to wait, there is so much activity in her life. I googled “songs about waiting” this week and got countless results across time and genres, from Phil Collins to Jennifer Lopez, the Beach Boys to Cindy Lauper, No Doubt to Tom Petty. There’s even a song in Hamilton called “Wait For It”. But in none of these songs are they simply sitting still - even if they aren’t physically doing anything, they become songs less about waiting and more about anticipation. We practice waiting,...
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Easter 6 Year A 2026: Acts 17:22-31

Every Memorial Day, it is a tradition in my family to go to the graves of our loved ones. We go as far back as my mother’s great great grandmother who died in 1934. Sometimes as a shorthand we’ll talk about how we’re “visiting” them. Like “let’s start with Aid and Clydia, then go by Grammy Owen and then Howard, etc.” It sounds like in high school when you’re planning your graduation party circuit. The day that Lincoln Memorial got rid of the water spigot that was our landmark to find Grammy Owen was a family crisis. We talk like we’re visiting living people; going to see them. We plan when we’re going to go to Waverly “for Grandpa Hennecke”. But we know they don’t live there. What does live there are our memories. And those names on the stones cause the memories to come back to life. They give us opportunities to talk about the people we still love although we don’t get to see them anymore. About the time my brother played tag in the back yard with our great grandmother who was in her ...
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