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Via Dolorosa Via Caritas

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Today is the second Sunday in Lent, 2021. Last year on this Sunday, I preached a sermon that talked about pilgrimage as a traditional Lenten practice. That was March first, and it was almost the last Sunday before we were all constrained to a level of solitude for which we were little prepared. I remember thinking, in the weeks after that sermon, that it would’ve been better to have preached on the way of the hermit as a Lenten practice. But we do our best, don’t we, given nobody can know the future. Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I feel as if the entire last year has been Lent. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Dr. Loren Crow’s entire sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent.

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Blessing in the Desert Wilderness

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This year we heard Mark’s version of the story. Mark’s version is much shorter and much sparser than Matthew or Luke’s versions. Sparse, like the desert that Jesus entered. It only takes Mark two verses to tell the story. Matthew and Luke take six times as long to tell the story. In Mark’s sparseness, some of the wonderful details that we know and love, like the content of those temptations, and the clever dialogue between Jesus and the devil are missing. And yet there are gifts in the sparseness, as well. Sometimes in all the detail we can miss the forest for the trees, as the old saying goes. One of the things that Mark’s telling obviously brings out is where this story takes place in the larger narrative. It allows us to see the forest more easily.

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Bingham’s entire sermon for the First Sunday of Lent.

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Transfigured in Love

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How is God being revealed to us in this time? What is God saying? How are we being transfigured? As our Presiding Bishop so often says, if it is not about love, it is not about God. The transfiguration that this pandemic brings does not have to be divine, but it can be. The difference is love.

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Bingham’s entire sermon for the last Sunday after the Epiphany.

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God made Manifest

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“God's word was incarnate in that manger in Bethlehem. That is what we celebrate every year at Christmas. At Epiphany we celebrate the way that truth, that reality, of the incarnation of God into this world was manifest to various people. Or, as that beautiful hymn we sang this morning put it, "God in man made manifest." This hymn so beautifully tells the very stories of Epiphany that we hear every year, of the people who had their manifestations, their epiphanies of God found in Jesus Christ.”

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Bingham’s entire sermon.

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Tempered by Love

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What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? To follow him on the way of love. This love that Saint Paul says is the only way to get through the challenges and the conflicts the community in Corinth is facing. This way of love that Jesus calls us to at this time also. This way of love that we need to get through these challenges that we face as a community, the political divisions, this pandemic, racial injustice. All of it can only be gotten through if we follow the way of love, love for our neighbor, love for the other, the way of love that Jesus came to show us.

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The call of Jonah. The call of Love.

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We also see that call to love in God's response to Jonah, because the story is also of God's profound love for Jonah, a love that is going to call him in the first place, a love that is willing to follow him out to sea and bring him back and save him when Jonah ignores God. This call of love calls Jonah a second time, and then the love that God has for Jonah is shown by his continuing to work with Jonah after he becomes obstinate and grumpy while waiting for God to destroy the city. There is a profound love that God has for Jonah that keeps pursuing him when Jonah isn't doing what God wants.

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Bingham’s entire sermon for the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany.

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On the Centrality of Love

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“All of these readings are weaving together this image of love. All this scripture weaves together this complex image of love. Love is not sentimental. Love is not easy. But love is God’s vision for this world because it was in love that God made this world. We face many challenges as a community, as a nation, as a world, and as followers of Jesus, as followers of God in this way of love, we know that that way of love is the path we must keep on taking, even when it is hard. That is the path that God has called us to follow. Follow Jesus on this way of love.”

Click “Read More” to read or listen to Bingham’s entire sermon for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany.

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