From the Pulpit
Trinity is blessed with many excellent preachers on its rota, which gives us a wonderful diversity of voices from the pulpit. Read on to see what we mean.
During this time of "social distancing" our worship has moved online.
The 23rd Psalm: Thou art with me
Jesus, Living Water and the Pandemic
Christ, Physician of the Soul
Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Some years ago, I made my first visit to Holy Cross Monastery, a community of Episcopal brothers in upstate New York. I was interested to see, carved over the main entrance to the old stone monastery, these words: “Crux est mundi medicina”, Latin for “the cross is the medicine of the world”.
I was struck by this statement, one I had never heard before. But upon reflection, I thought of Jesus’s words in a passage of Matthew found a few chapters further on from today’s reading: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but rather those who are sick.” What sickness was Jesus referring to here? Jesus said further: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Mt 9:12-13) In other words, the sickness Jesus came to treat is human sinfulness. Thus, as the words at Holy Cross state, Jesus is the mundi medicina, the medicine of the world, our Physician of Souls.
Reconciliation
I recently found myself sitting in the dentist’s chair, learning that I had many cavities to be taken care of, and that I’d need a lot of dental work. It was what I’d been warned about for years—because although I have been a faithful tooth brusher since early childhood, I’d never become a regular flosser.
Oh, from time to time I’d make a resolution and floss a few days in a row. One year I even took it on as my Lenten discipline, which worked out pretty well until after we finished singing “Hail Thee Festival Day” and I promptly forgot where my floss was…
Here I am, send me
Year A - Third Sunday After Epiphany
Sunday January 26, 2020
Rev. Norman MacLeod
Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23
Beloved Community
Year A - The Second Sunday After Epiphany
January 19, 2020
The Rev. Norman M. MacLeod
Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40:1-12, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42
Identity
Year A - The Second Sunday After Christmas
January 5, 2020
The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick
Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
There may be nothing more important to us than claiming our identity as the unique individuals we are. It defines us as the particular persons we are: it distinguishes us as having a personality or individuality that is different, in some crucial and irreducible ways, from the personalities of others. One of the most frightening things that can occur to us is having our identity stolen or even having our identity erased from the arenas in which we live and act. A person with no identity is virtually no one at all.
Resurrection
Year C - Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
November 10, 2019
Ms. Anne Rapkin
LUKE 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry not are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
"And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
To be assigned to preach about this morning's Gospel passage seems like a punishment for my sins. Is there anything about this passage that grips the imagination? The argument between Jesus and the Sadducees seems so archaic, so irrelevant. Very little sense can be made of the argument without knowing something about 1st-century Jewish religion in Palestine--not an especially fascinating subject for most people. However, to get at the heart of today's reading, we have to understand its historical religious context. So I'm going to speak to that, and I hope you'll stick with me.