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A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 10
July 16, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 “Listen! A sower went out to sow.” Of all of Jesus’s parables, this may have the most memorable start. We know what comes next–the sower throws seed indiscriminately on all kinds of ground. Sometimes the seed sprouts; sometimes it doesn’t. When it does sprout, sometimes it thrives; sometimes it doesn’t.
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A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 9
July 9, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting– over and over announcing your place in the family of things. That poem is by Mary Oliver, the renowned contemporary poet who writes so eloquently about the natural world and the spiritual life. She shows how the two are intimately connected, and how we, beloved creatures and children of God, are bound up in the middle of it all. But perhaps when I started the poem, you raised your eyebrows. Her opening line, you don’t have to be good–well it flies in the face of a lot of what we think about, of the story we tell ourselves, of what we think of when we think about leading a Christian life. A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 8
July 2, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Genesis 22:1-14 I have a vivid memory from my childhood. I was probably around 8 years old. It’s dark, and we are on our way to the hospital for me to have yet another surgery. That was the year I had one surgery every two to three months. The recovery was painful, and just as I felt I was about healed I had to go back. In the darkness, in the backseat, I remember feeling as if no one around me really understood what I felt. I did not feel like anyone could really see me–that is, I didn’t feel like anyone could understand what I was dealing with. I felt alone, and my questions to God went unanswered. As I’ve grown, I have wondered what my mother, alone in the front seat, was thinking about on that dark drive. Knowing what her son would go through in a couple of short hours must have been painful for her, too. How helpless she must have felt. A sermon for the third Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 6
June 18, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7; Romans 5:1-8 The angel said to me: "Why are you laughing?" "Laughing! Not me. Who was laughing? I did not laugh. It was A cough. I was coughing. Only hyenas laugh. It was the cold I caught nine minutes after Abraham married me: when I saw How I was slender and beautiful, more and more Slender and beautiful. I was also Clearing my throat; something inside of me is continually telling me something I do not wish to hear: A joke: A big joke: But the joke is always just on me. He said: you will have more children than the sky's stars And the seashore's sands, if you just wait patiently. Wait: patiently: ninety years? You see The joke's on me!" This poem, called “Sarah,” by the 20th century American poet Delmore Schwartz is a creative reimagining of today’s reading from Genesis and the exchange between Sarah and the heavenly visitors. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, is told at the age of 90 that she will not be barren forever, but that she will, indeed, bear a child. She laughs. Who wouldn’t? Abraham himself laughs at this promise in another place. I would probably laugh, too. Today, it is Sarah who laughs, because she has heard this before. God has promised an heir already. God has doubled down on that promise, more than once already. And yet there is so much that makes this promise seem ridiculous on its face. So Sarah laughs–skeptically, mockingly, dismissively, ironically, perhaps a little like a hyena. “So numerous shall your descendants be, Sarah.” “Yeah, sure God, whatever you say.” A sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 5
June 11, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 “As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” Today’s gospel takes us to the calling of St. Matthew. Jesus sees an unlikely disciple in an unlikely place. Matthew, a tax collector, sitting in a tax booth, would not have expected a call from Jesus. Despised, called a collaborator with the Romans, Matthew was not the most obvious candidate for discipleship. But Jesus calls him anyway. A sermon for the First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
May 28, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; II Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20 Today is Trinity Sunday, the day we celebrate and acknowledge that we serve and worship a triune God, three in one, one in three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. The Trinity is not just a way we seek to understand God. Rather, the Trinity is Who God is in God’s very Being, as revealed in Holy Scripture and through tradition. A sermon for the Feast of Pentecost
May 28, 2023 Preached at St. Peter's in Tollville, Ark. The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23 “Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart I will pray.” So says the African American spiritual. It’s an appropriate song for today, the feast of Pentecost, because it is today that we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on those first apostles. This Holy Spirit is the promised comforter, the promised Advocate, the third person of the Holy Trinity, sent to support, strengthen, and sustain them. This is the One who gives them power to accomplish what they have been called to do. A sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 14, 2023: Mother's Day The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: John 14:15-21 “If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may ‘bide with you for ever: e’en the spir’t of truth.” If you have ever sung in a choir at an Episcopal church, you have likely sung these words from our gospel today set to music by Thomas Tallis, the English musician and composer of the 16th century. His music has, in a sense, defined this text for me. In my mind, I cannot hear the words of Jesus in this passage from John without also hearing the music of Tallis. Such is the power of music. A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 7, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: John 14:1-14 In today’s reading from John, Jesus is telling his disciples goodbye. Our reading comes from the Last Supper. Jesus is giving his farewell discourse, his final parting words before his death. In a few moments, he will pray his high priestly prayer, asking God the Father to care for them, to strengthen them, to make them one as he and the Father are one. Jesus tells them that where he is going, they cannot go right now. He is going to prepare a place for them. But in time, he will come again and take them to his Father’s house, so that where he is, they may be also. This promise is for us today, as well. Christ is preparing a place even now for us. In the Father’s house are many dwellings. This is a way of saying there is enough room for you and for me, enough room for all the creation, within the Creator’s arms of love and mercy. He says, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 30, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Acts 2:42-47 A friend of mine in seminary once said it best. We had a big test coming up, and we were worried and complaining. I remember my friend saying, “Listen, y’all, we can do hard things.” “How can you be sure about that?” came the reply. My friend said, “We can do hard things because Jesus is risen from the dead.” |
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