Mother Claire's Sermons

One of my closest friends has been bald since he was nine years old. He has a condition called alopecia, where you lose all of your hair. He’ll get a little bit of peach fuzz, but nothing else. No eyelashes, eyebrows, nothing. He was also raised Pentecostal, with a belief in faith healing. So he believed that if he just prayed hard enough, his condition would change - and, worse, that the loss of his hair was a sign that he did not have enough faith. My heart breaks when I think of that 9-year-old boy, praying so hard, firmly believing that his hair loss was his own fault. Jesus’ statement at the end of today’s Gospel lesson, “your faith has made you well”, seems to affirm this theology. But Jesus certainly doesn’t say anything like this every time he heals. Back in Luke chapter 9 Jesus seems to say the opposite. “A man from the crowd shouted, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look at my son…I begged your disciples to cast (the spirit) out, but they could not.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and ...

On Friday, the new Archbishop of Canterbury was announced. The Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally, the current Bishop of London, will be the first woman to hold the seat since its establishment in 597. I wonder how Bishop Mullally feels. Does she feel completely equal to her new situation? Does she feel a weight in being the first woman to hold the position when there are many within the Anglican Communion who vocally believe that her gender should be disqualifying? Although she was the first woman to serve as  Bishop of London, it would be naive to think there aren’t massive differences between being Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. Does she feel anxious about what former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called the expectation that the archbishop have an opinion on everything? We all know there’s a difference between theoretically knowing how to do something and being in the driver’s seat. The first time I had to change a flat tire on my car, I knew how to do it: jack ...