Posts tagged as:

death

Those in the tombs shall rejoice

April 14, 2009

More Schmemann: Only Christ has risen from the dead, but in doing so He destroyed our death, He destroyed its dominion, its hopelessness, its finality. No, it is not nirvana or a shadowy life beyond the grave that Christ promises us, but an eruption of life, a new heaven and a new earth, joy in [...]

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Do our people truly believe in resurrection?

April 11, 2009

It wasn’t until my late twenties, as a newly-minted pastor, that I had my first real encounters with common beliefs about death and afterlife among Christians. My vicarage was at a fairly large congregation, but no one died that year, and I had few family experiences of death at that point. The most significant death [...]

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Holy Tuesday

April 7, 2009

Sermon for Holy Tuesday Vespers–The Passion of St. Mark The death of a man is not unique. All men die. And the death of a man on a cross is hardly unique. Thousands of men died this way. What makes the death of Jesus unique is that in His death, sin is being put to [...]

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Ash Wednesday

February 25, 2009

Propers from the Lutheran Lectionary: Joel 2.12-19; 2 Peter 1.2-11; Mattew 6.16-21 The ashes stain my thumb such that I have to scrub harshly with soap to remove it. The stain reminds me of the pictures you probably have seen, photos of Iraqis who, after voting, have purple thumbs dipped in ink. But the comparison [...]

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Hemingway on Ash Wednesday

February 25, 2009

Parishioner Mollie Ziegler Hemingway has a short piece on Ash Wednesday in National Review’s online symposium on the observance. In a very short space, she does a nice job reflecting on the human condition of mortality and the Christocentric nature of Lent. You can read it here.

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Mystery in the little martyrs of Bethlehem

December 27, 2008

I’m struggling writing my sermon for tomorrow, Holy Innocents (Mt. 2.13-18), because I simply don’t know what to make of those little children who were killed. My mind keeps going to the still-born baby I buried a couple of years ago, the time I visited the hospital to pray with a woman about to have [...]

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Trinity 25 sermon

November 17, 2008

  “Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble.” Job is not only talking about himself in those words; he is talking about us. Our days are numbered, yet in our folly we don’t count them correctly. Your days are determined; the number of your months is with [...]

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Back-to-school diversions

September 2, 2008

In Islam, it is a sin to love unbelievers. True piety requires hatred of them.  Pastor Weedon has been running a series on “Neglected Rubrics.” Here is the first. National Review’s Mark Hemingway on offshore drilling. He also helped write the Democratic party platform! Pastor Michael Foy writes at Four and Twenty Blackbirds about compulsory [...]

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The blood-drainers have gone way too far this time

August 18, 2008

When I lived in southern Illinois, I had bad experience after bad experience with the funeral homes. Some were worse than others, but the men running them were all obsessed with the title “Funeral Director.” It trumped all things religious, and since our Lutheran church didn’t exactly run a Baptist tissue-soaker, it often meant war. [...]

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Gravestones that confess

August 5, 2008

It’s important to me that my tombstone confesses Christ and particularly the hope of the resurrection. When visiting Montpelier last weekend, we went to the Madison family graveyard to see the stones of President James and Dolley. After seeing them, I turned and saw this on another grave marker:   It’s not at all what [...]

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