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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.”
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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. |
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