Audio

Where is Christ Found

I want to start my sermon today with a story. It is a story about a priest named Marc Nikkel. Marc was one of my dad’s priests in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, although he was not serving in the geographic boundaries of the Diocese because he was a missionary in Sudan. Marc spent the better part of the last twenty years of his life in Sudan, going there initially in 1981 to teach at the Bishop Gwynne College, an Anglican Episcopal school. Along the way he felt a call to the priesthood and so returned stateside for some coursework and to get ordained. Then he returned to Sudan as a priest.

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Read, Mark, Learn, and Inwardly Digest

"Our worship life is full of Scripture. Beyond our worship life, how is it that we discern things in the Episcopal way? That is also deeply rooted in Scripture. We have the concept of the three-legged stool. The idea that in order to understand anything about faith, anything about God or what God wants us to do in this world, we need to look at that dialogue of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, that dialogue of our minds, the voices of our ancestors, and Scripture. There are debates among Episcopalians as to whether all three of those are equal, or does Scripture have a bigger role. But however you look at it, Scripture is critically important."

Click “Read more” to read or listen to Bingham's entire sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost.

Agents of Hope

We live in highly anxious times. That might be something of an understatement for 2020. There is so much to be understandably anxious about right now in this year. One of the side affects or outcomes of anxiety can be hopelessness. It is easy to allow anxiety to sap us of our hope. “Hope, that thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” as Emily Dickinson so beautifully put it. Hope is important to us. We need hope to keep moving forward, especially when times are so difficult. We need hope, and anxiety is the enemy of that hope.

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Love, Even in a Pandemic

As we talked about last week, Paul is writing this letter to a community that he misses immensely and desperately wants to see in person, but he can’t. So he is writing a letter using the technology of his day in order to communicate with them and to connect with them. It is not unlike what we are doing here, using the technology of our day, the video and internet, in order to connect with one another. As you read Paul’s letter you will see that it is quite clear that Paul is deeply affectioned to the people there in Thessalonica. Again, not unlike today. We are deeply affectioned to one another. I miss you immensely, I care for you deeply. This is what Paul was feeling.

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Offering Thanks Even in a Pandemic

For me, this year as we have been working our way through the Epistles, I have been connecting with them in a new way. I am connecting with Paul in a new way. The past month or so we have been working our way through Paul’s letter to the Phillipians, and today we move on to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. We will be here about a month, we’ll take one week off for All Saints Sunday, but over the next month or so we are going to make our way through Paul’s letter to this community, the church of the Thessalonians.

Read Bingham’s entire sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, or listen to the audio, by clicking on “Read more”

Forward in Faith Together

“My brothers and sisters whom I love and I long for.” I resonate like never before with these words of St. Paul that we just heard. My brothers and sisters, my siblings in Christ, you the people of St. Mary’s whom I love and I long for, I miss you. I miss being together, in person, at the church, crowded together, singing hymns, greeting one another with the sign of the peace, kneeling side by side to receive the Sacrament. I miss you.

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