A View From The Earth

  Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash This is the sermon that was offered up during Eucharist on September 27, 2020 outside on the lawn at Trinity Episcopal Church in Muscatine, Iowa. The Eucharist service was also streamed to Facebook. Services were affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic and all people in person were physically distant and wore face coverings. The scripture readings were Ezekiel 18:1-4,25-32, Psalm 25:1-8, Philippians 2:1-13, and Matthew 21:23-32. Almighty God, Let us go into the vineyard, whatever time of day it might be, and work for you, to do your will.  May we go when you call us, but even if we don’t go then, let us go when we are able so your will is done. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My parents were card-players.  Avid card players.  They hosted card clubs, attended daytime card groups after they retired, and I’m pretty sure that each one of my children knew that they had a Grandma who was a card sha...

This is a sermon that I gave on January 10, 2010 at Church of the Saviour in Clermont, Iowa. Don’t you hate it? You are watching a great movie on T.V. The excitement is mounting. You are getting to a really good part. You are sitting on the edge of your seat. Then right in the middle before the plot is revealed or the plot takes a new and exciting twist, a commercial comes on. For the next two to three minutes you see commercials about everything imaginable. We are told that advertisers may buy at least forty time slots on a single station, for a single day, when introducing a new product. No doubt they are on to something. Classic sayings abound. “Plop. Plop. Fizz. Fizz. Oh, what a relief it is.” “Snap, Crackle , Pop.” “Don’t Leave Home With Out It.” "Finger lickin’ good." "Have a break. Have a Kit-Kat." "Just do it." “Built Ford Tough.” The very successful media people have one question in mind: Have you heard? We have heard. We reme...

The bell tower at Church of the Saviour, Clermont, Iowa This is a sermon that I gave on November 23, 2008 at Church of the Saviour in Clermont, Iowa. The scripture basis for this is Matthew 25:31-46, Ezekiel 34:11-24, and Ephesians 1:15-23. The following is a brief meditation based on writings by Claudia Burney: "Jesus' family lives next door. He’s got an eight-year-old niece and her three-year-old brother. The Son of Man is the uncle of those starving Ethiopian children. They only gets breakfast and lunch at school, when they make it. His sister is a crack addict. His aunts are illegal immigrants, and the processing plant is closing. Poor King of Kings. Jesus' brother is two houses down and has six children. and his sister-in-law’s pregnant with the seventh. I don’t know if they haven’t figured out what birth control is, or what, but how can his brother feed all those babies on that salary? That means hardworking taxpayers’ money has to go for the Christ’s...

This is the sermon I gave at Church of the Saviour Episcopal Church in Clermont, Iowa on August 24, 2008. The question I asked was: Who is Jesus? In todays readings names have a central role. In the reading from Exodus, the story is about how the descendants of Jacob become the twelve tribes of Israel and how they become enslaved to the Egyptians. One of those descendants is a baby boy who is put in a basket by his mother so he escapes death by the hands of the Egyptians. Well, the little one is found by none other than the daughter of Pharaoh, who will raise him as her child, and she names him Moses because she “drew him out of the water”. The name Moses is very significant because it is a royal Egyptian name, the names of the Pharaohs themselves often have Moses as part of their name because the Pharaohs were considered gods and their power as a god came from the Nile river, from the water. Without the water of the Nile, Egypt would cease to exist. So it is very significant...