Hospitality is the Heart

“Welcome!”

Everywhere we go, someone or some place is welcoming us. We put out welcome mats. Some stores have greeters whose only job is to say "welcome" to customers as they enter. Go into a restaurant and you might hear, "Good evening and welcome! Table for two?" Just up the road here on Belcher Road one sign welcomes us to Largo if you’re going south, and across the street another sign welcomes us to Clearwater as we drive north. The ring master at the circus starts the show wearing his top-hat and tails, saying "Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and girls! Welcome to the greatest show on earth!"

Welcome is a lovely word with a long history, compounding two familiar words, "well" and "come," though with slightly different meanings than what we use today. The root of "well" could mean something like "wellness" or "well-being," or can be a kind of blessing to “be well.”  "Come" is from an Old English word for one who arrives—no surprises there. So, in its earliest sense, "welcome" is an invitation and a blessing to be received into the goodness of this new place, where one has just arrived.t

Making one feel welcome is not as simple as offering a word. Preparing to welcome someone is an art that takes thought, intention, and discipline. Some practitioners of hospitality are always ready with the accoutrements of welcome: an appropriate beverage, the right food at the right time, a comfortable chair, a few thoughtful and respectful questions of the guest. An effective welcome courteously wipes away the strangeness or awkwardness of a new setting and makes one feel at home.

And during the past few weeks we've seen the power of welcome in cities all over the US have welcomed soccer, er... football!... teams from all over the globe to the world cup. I've loved the images of Japanese players enjoying barbeque in Kansas City, the Scottish Tartan Army in Boston, and we can thank the Dutch in Houston for planting in us that joyous earworm as we dance to the left and to the right. It was such a good time, that the Scots even wrote a public thank you note to the people of Boston (after drinking all their beer)!  

For Jews and Christians, hospitality has always been at the heart of who we are. The call to welcome the stranger is anchored in the Torah and was a part of the measure of the Hebrew community's faithfulness to God. Jesus both received hospitality and taught his followers to be hospitable.

Welcome is built into the geography and culture of the Holy Land. We are used to our planes, trains, and automobiles, but for most of human history people travelled at a walking pace. And if you were going from Europe or Asia Minor to Persia, the Nile Delta or Africa, or back, it meant that one went on foot… or maybe by horse or camel… through a narrow strip of land with the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the desert or mountains to the east. One of the reasons that Israel and Palestine is “holy land” is that it exists on a vital land bridge between three continents. Geography is one reason that so many ancient empires coveted that territory so much. And because the whole world seemed to walk through, hospitality was baked into Hebrew culture from the start.

Of course, travelers on this land bridge were rarely family. These were folks unknown to the community. They were aliens and foreigners, people who ate different foods, wore different clothes, spoke different languages, worshipped different gods. Opening one's home could be risky but survival depended upon hospitality. Today we'd describe such a thing as out and out foolishness. So, while our homes might have welcome mats, we also have locks, doorbells, peep holes, and even cameras that broadcast to our phones when a person is at the door. It’s been true since the dawn of time, that’s why there were also walled cities in ancient times. We humans might need hospitality, but we also fear the stranger.

In biblical times, hospitality was central to Hebrew identity. Remember the story of Jesus born in a manger? Or Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? The risk did not define the people; their hospitality did, because hospitality is central to the character of God.

Early Christian communities were also welcoming and hospitable. Paul reminded the Romans to offer hospitality to the alien, and in the Letter to the Hebrews we are reminded to show hospitality to everyone because, you never know, you might be entertaining angels in disguise. In Acts, the early deacons practiced hospitality throughout the community, bringing welcome to those in need. And in Matthew's community, hospitality is a measure of the faithfulness of the people. Welcoming prophets, righteous ones, and disciples (whom Matthew’s Gospel called "little ones") was a disciplined practice of the young churches.

In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris tells the story of a nun who, although she had Alzheimer's, still asks to be rolled in her wheelchair to the door of her nursing home so she can greet every guest. Said one nun of her sister in ministry, "She is no longer certain what she is welcoming people to...but hospitality is so deeply ingrained in her that it has become her whole life.” Norris writes that "in monastic spirituality…, only people who are basically at home, and at home in themselves, can offer hospitality...hospitality has a way of breaking through our insularity.”

Welcome as a practice of hospitality doesn't just happen. It must be taught. But such lessons don't come easily in our society. Some years ago, when I was serving as a hospital chaplain, I used to go around filling in for small churches. In nearly every case, the congregations were warm and welcoming… and also set in their ways. And occasionally, as sometimes happens when you see the same folks week after week, a congregation might get a little rusty in the art of welcome.

I remember going to one church for the first time and had no idea how they did things. I chatted with the organist and a lector, but after I put on my vestments, I found myself all alone in the sacristy with no idea how to find the sanctuary or where to procession formed. I opened a door, thinking it led into the church, and found myself outside and before I could turn around, the door closed. Locked. So, I went to the front of the church, thinking at least I could go in the front door, and, wouldn’t you know, the big red doors facing the busy main street under an “Episcopal Church Welcomes You” sign, was also locked. I could hear the opening hymn start up, and the tower bell rang over my head, but I couldn’t get in! It looked like it was going to be a very short service that Sunday! I knocked as loudly as I could… pounded on the door, actually. Finally, a fellow in choir robes opened the door, looked at me as if I had grown two heads, and asked, “What are you doing there? We never use this door!”

Hospitality isn’t just about being nice, and it’s more than putting out a welcome mat. It's a matter of attention: attention to those barriers, impediments, biases, and obstacles that we construct through habit and tradition, that can be barriers to the good news, a deterrent to participation in the church, and a distraction from abundant life in Jesus Christ.

The Greek word for stranger—xenos – is also the word for guest and host. In this age of contemporary tribal warfare, of Balkanization and gated communities, most of us are aware of the term "xenophobia," or fear of the stranger. This fear leads to nationalism, racism, and even genocide.

But, on the other hand, Jesus' call to welcome another is a call to “xenophilia,” or love of stranger. With xenophilia, the stranger is also the guest, and in the Gospel of Luke, welcoming the stranger is how the risen Christ is made known after that long walk on the Emmaus road, becoming both the guest and the host.

Hospitality is a skill that is taught. It all begins with practice, by simply doing hospitable things. The best hosts simply bring who we are, what we have, where we are, as graciously as we are able. Sure, that might mean putting out the best china, silver, and linens; at other times it may simply be a cup of coffee in a disposable cup and a cookie. In every case, it is the gesture itself, the practice, that shapes the character of the encounter, and the participants, into a story of grace that is the essence of the moment.

Often, we learn such lessons by experiencing just how involved hospitality can be. A coarse blurt of honest feelings might let off some steam in the moment, but it rarely serves the target of our discharge, or ourselves for that matter. But a gracious welcome can transform not only a moment but a life. A thoughtful pause, a quiet nod, an encouraging, courteous word of welcome can make Christ's presence known and perhaps even help one hear God's call.

I learned this a long time ago when I was a brand-new deacon and priest. I served a church in a small city that had seen it’s mills and factory close and leave town, the parish ran a six-day a week noonday meal that was free to everyone, as well as a food pantry, a fund for emergency fuel-oil, and hosted several twelve-step groups. The parish also served a small group of special needs adults who used to be housed in big institutions, but who now lived in nearby apartments or group homes.

One of those folks was a guy named Billy, who was always the first one to arrive at church, waiting for whoever would unlock the doors on Sunday mornings. Billy had no filters and no ‘off’ switch. The previous Rector taught him to light and put out the candles for the early Sunday Eucharist, and to serve the altar, which he did very faithfully. But this also meant that every Sunday the early service was a kind of liturgical improv because one never knew exactly when an item would come next, or what it might be. Remember that lack of an “off” switch? From the moment he came to the time he went home, he talked, hummed, sang, or would parrot whatever car or motorcycle drove past the church during the service. It was simply how Billy was wired.

And I have to say, it drove me bananas! Raised, as I was, in a household where church meant a certain decorum, I was not prepared for this! But my supervisor, a retired Cathedral Canon (whom Billy called ‘Kenny’), never seemed to mind. He took every curve ball in stride.

One day, after a particularly wild Sunday that severely tested my stamina, I went to my mentor and asked him how he did it. How could he handle Billy so calmly and graciously, while I was so wired from not knowing what would come next.

After a moment’s thought, the Canon said, “Well, Andrew, he’s Jesus.” At first, I felt about two inches tall, but that wisdom changed everything for me. It was from there that I began to develop what has become a regular prayer for me:

“Grant us the grace, O God, to see the face of Jesus in the people you bring to us; and also give us grace to be the face of Jesus to those who seek Him.”

Welcoming another requires attention to the other. The welcome Jesus invites us to share is an act of grace, vulnerability, and love because we must set aside our discomfort around difference or strangeness and choose instead to accept the grace of meeting another of God’s children as they are. And in that meeting, we are reminded what Jesus taught us: that in giving even a cup of cold water to one of Jesus’ little ones is also caring for Jesus himself.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8A), June 28, 2026, at St. John's Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (8A).

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Knowing which way is "up!"

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union sixty-five years ago. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. 

It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok 1! But we do know this: in the days before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized that Easter Sunday.

The infamous comment was actually made by Nikita Khrushchev about a month or so after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, he said what he thought Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (and probably also unable to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

Never missing an opportunity to have fun, the speech did inspire a 1963 film called Heavens Above!, a screwball British comedy starring Peter Sellers who plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar who is accidently appointed to small parish basically run by the wealthy lord of the nearby manor. The new vicar started doing exactly what Jesus taught: he gave away food to poor, sold all his (and his parish’s) possessions, and welcomed the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that the folks complain to the bishop. But he has generated such publicity that they can't really remove him, so instead he is appointed as the new Bishop of Outer Space, stuffed into a Mercury-like capsule, and shot into space. From there, as he orbited the earth, he read the psalms over the radio from his space capsule. 

A more famous (and lasting) response to the Gagarin mis-quote came from three real American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 seven years after Gagarin's flight on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

Which just goes to show that the geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing!

The Feast of the Ascension, which comes forty days after Easter, describes and celebrates the return of the living, crucified, and resurrected Jesus to heaven. Many people, especially today, when we can peer into deep space at other galaxies, get hung up on what is meant by “up.”

Which raises a question: which way is "up?" 

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just disappear into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes and tells them to “snap out of it!” and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship!

Our catechism in The Book of Common Prayer reminds us that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to stay put in the city and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples, in this period between resurrection and Pentecost, were not powerless, alone, nor afraid but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community: they prayed and sang and worshipped. They were not hiding but lived out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple through the streets of Jerusalem for all to see!

What changed was the geography of holiness. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, would arrive on Pentecost!

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ because heaven had come to earth!  And this changed them! Their relationships with God each other and even with the world around them was transformed because they were restored and renewed. 

Finally, the Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. Its importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when in fact it is God coming “down,” to meet us and all humanity and creation right where we are, tuning our hearts and our senses towards Christ! Giving us the gifts, the power, and the skill, to see humanity and creation more and more through God’s eyes. The Ascension shows us that that prayer we pray every day us, the one that Jesus taught us, that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven is in fact happening—all around us!

So which way is “up?”

The Ascension shows us that as we are drawn to Christ, to each other, and to the world, we are being drawn to God. That way is “up!”

The Ascension reminds us, as Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws to heaven and invites us to work in The City—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. And the only place where we can receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we, his people, live, pray, work, and worship.

This is the geography of the holy. We don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because God is right here, right now!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, right up until he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know. But I do know this: we here in this city, in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

The Ascension invites to look up and see heaven and, at the same time, look around into the city because right here, right now, we baptized people inhabit the geography of the holy.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Sunday, May 17, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

No Short Cuts

Have you ever wished for a short-cut? You know, you’re driving someplace and wish you could just fly over the cars ahead of you like a magic carpet. Sometimes I’m driving and hear myself pray “Oh, God! Give me a sign.” Even a big green one will do!

In the fifty days of Easter, we hear all about Jesus’ resurrection appearances. And, you know what? Jesus never takes a short-cut. People’s eyes are opened, sure; and, yeah, people see the Risen Jesus. He speaks to them. He eats with them. But he never jumps in front of them arms wide saying “ta-da!” He doesn’t resort to cosmic card tricks or spiritual gimmicks. While some of us (like me!) would love that, and, sure, Jesus wants us to see and know that he is risen but look at how he goes about it. In the Gospels, the risen Christ accompanies folks and that changes the way they see.  And I don’t know about you, but looking back, I find that Jesus has been walking me my whole journey long, it’s just that I didn’t see it at the time. I’ll bet that that is true for you, too.

In today’s Gospel from Luke, look at what happens on the road to Emmaus. Two people, Cleopas and a friend, are headed home after a very hard day, actually a very hard week. It’s late afternoon on the very first Easter Day, the actual day of Jesus’ resurrection. But they don’t know that yet. All they know is that they have experienced some very disturbing things. Just a week before, they saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem in triumph. They saw him in the Temple. But they also saw Jesus get arrested, publicly tried, humiliated and then executed. What started out as a week filled with hope became a very sad and sour Passover celebration because they really hoped that Jesus would be the one to liberate the people from the very people who killed him.

But that’s not all: there’s news that two women saw that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and that they saw angels who told them that he is risen; two of Jesus closest followers checked it out and found the tomb empty; and now the grapevine is alive with rumors that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead!

I suspect that for Cleopas and his companion it was all just too much…a real emotional roller coaster…and so many questions…it was, I suspect, too painful and too strange. Who can blame them for wanting to go home to someplace familiar, someplace quiet. But home is about seven miles outside of Jerusalem, so they have a long afternoon walk ahead of them.

As they head home, Jesus joins them and walks with them. And even though they don’t recognize him, he doesn’t jump up and say “Hey, guys! It’s me!”  Instead, he listens to their story. He listens to the news…and he listens to their hearts.

Even when he begins to open the scriptures to them, he does not tell them who he is. He explains what God has been doing through the whole history of the people of Israel. Most of all he shows them how scripture ultimately points to and is understood best through Jesus.

When they get to their house, Jesus does this little maneuver like he is still going on to the next town or tavern…when they invite him in to stay with them. Even now, Jesus doesn’t impose…he waits for them to invite him in.

Then, and only then, does he take the initiative, picking up the bread set before him and says the ancient Jewish blessing, then he breaks the bread and as he shares the bread, now—now! —they understand!

Notice how Luke’s Gospel bookends the passion with a meal at both ends of the passion. First, there is Jesus’ last supper in the upper room, where he says “This is my body” and now, after the resurrection, in Emmaus it is sealed with a meal. It is only after encountering the Risen Jesus that the Last Supper – and the Holy Eucharist that grew out of it – makes any sense at all. Instead of a testimonial to the dear departed founder, it is a living sign of the living, risen Christ.

Jesus does so much on the road with these two people but look also at what he does not do. He could have reassured them…instead he walked with them through their pain.  When he teaches them from the scriptures, he could have imposed himself on them…instead, he lets the word marinate—they remember it as “[burning] in their hearts.” When he picks up the bread, he doesn’t say “Hey, guys! Watch this!” No, instead he simply blesses it and gives it. Jesus never short-circuits the process but allows the encounter to unfold at its own pace until at last…they see!

There are no short cuts on the road to Emmaus. And thank God for it because in letting their encounter with the Risen Christ bubble up, these two followers of Jesus see for themselves that he is alive not by intimidation or magic or manipulation but by participation. They are participating in their own encounter with the Risen Jesus.

This is a lesson that we need to learn over and over again. We live in an age where so much communication is “directed,” tested, and designed to illicit a particular response. It’s hard to even go buy a loaf of bread and a carton of milk without feeling like we are some kind of Pavlovian dog, enticed and steered towards a particular thing or outcome. We are so media-addicted that we even have a president who came up in sales, hosted a game show, and communicates by social media. It hard in this world of relentless information to imagine what it is like to simply be accompanied by Jesus, who respects our dignity enough to allow each of us respond to the Spirit in our own way.

I suspect that when the eyes of Cleopas and friend were opened, it was like a flash of light. A moment of insight when everything suddenly made sense! It felt new and exciting. A great and marvelous “A-ha!” And that is wonderful! Ask any teacher who sees student light up with recognition when they get it. They will also tell you that these eye-opening moments come after long, sometimes painful, cultivation.

That “A-ha!” comes at the dinner table, when Jesus takes up bread and offers a blessing.  I wonder if Cleopas and his friend had any idea when their journey began that their unexpected dinner guest would become their host.

In remembering this encounter, the Gospel of Luke invites us to connect the Eucharist we do in our communities, whether a simple meal around a table or a High Mass, with what Jesus did not only on the road, but also in the upper room, the cross, and resurrection as we walk with Christ on our journey of faith.

Early Christians were sometimes called people “of the way.” I like that because we are all on the road, and that road takes us to the cross and from there to an on-going, always new encounter with the Risen Jesus. All of us are walking home. We may wish for a shorter route and we might be disappointed that it’s not always a mountaintop experience, because in fact most of our journey is rather, but wonderfully, ordinary. A saying attributed to St. Benedict of Nursia goes “Always we begin again.” But however we journey, we never walk alone. Jesus walks with us…even if we don’t know it…and we travel in Christian community. Luke’s Gospel shows us that the way Jesus walked with the two on the road is exactly the way he walks with us on our journeys.

Look at us! Here we are, gathered from all kinds of places--our homes, our families, our work and our school--and we all have a story. We have stories of poignancy and possibility, stories of victory and setbacks. We bring all of that when we gather as the people of God around a table… yeah, a little fancier, and we are arranged a little differently than our meals at home… but gathered around a table just the same.

A few years ago, my wife and I joined a group of Episcopalians and other people of faith, in walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, from east to west across northern Spain. In following this ancient pilgrim path, every one of us were invited in our way to both seek and walk with Christ. Our hosts for this pilgrimage were folks from The United Thank Offering (you know, the blue boxes!) and the Iglesia Española Reformada Episcopal, the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church. Their goal was to establish a chapel in Santiago, Spain, so that pilgrims who’ve walked the Way of St. James might be able to receive Communion… the traditional end of a pilgrimage… but who might have felt excluded in the Catholic Basilica at the end of the pilgrim way. The Anglican Pilgrim Center exists today just a few steps away from the traditional end of the route.

Every pilgrim on the Camino keeps a “passport” that is stamped along the way and is given a shell signifying their journey. As I walked the pilgrim way, I found myself singing the South African liberation song “We Are Marching in the Light of God.” On the first part of the journey, I imagined being Cleopas and his friend walking with Jesus. For the rest of the journey, my meditation turned to imagining Cleopas and friend racing back along the way they just came to tell Jesus’ friends and apprentices “We have seen the Lord!”

In our sacramental living, we are tuned to see God at work all around us. Our eyes are opened.  We see the risen Christ. More important we know the Risen Christ and show the Risen Christ.

So now we go back into the world, renewed, reconciled, recreated…exactly as we were and yet totally new, and we will tell our friends “We have seen the Lord!” … that he is known to us in the breaking of the bread. It’s true: there are no short-cuts on the road to Emmaus but that’s okay because all along the way, the Risen Jesus is walking right beside us. 

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for 3 Easter, Year A, Sunday, April 19, 2026 at Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 3 Easter Sunday, April 19, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about the Anglican Pilgrim Center here.

“Jesus, King of Glory, remember me in your kingdom!”

I don’t know about you (and perhaps I am being a bit oversensitive) but it does strike me as just a little odd that this last Sunday of the Church’s year has come to be called the Feast of Christ the King... I mean, we Americans fought a revolution so that we would have a government without kings. And after the Revolution, it took a while for we Episcopalians to convince our fellow citizens that we weren’t singing “You’ll Be Back” to ourselves, secretly yearning to run back to King George to run things for us (“Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da….”)

But all the other churches who share the Revised Common Lectionary with us—which is, like, nearly everybody! — call today “Christ the King Sunday”, so let’s think about what kingship means for Jesus and for us.

Here in America we tend to think of royalty in much the same way we think of celebrities. So when we say “The King” we might think of a British monarch…or we must just as easily think of Elvis, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. Or maybe Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Before he was President, Donald Trump was called the King of Wall Street. There are the Los Angeles Kings, the Sacramento Kings, king snakes, kingfishers, king crab, chicken a la king, king of the mountain, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, The Kings of Leon, B.B. King, Stephen King, and Burger King. There’s King Arthur flour, Carole King, king salmon, the Lion King, the King James Bible, and Steve Martin sang “King Tut.”

Being a “king” may be “king-sized” which might seem like a bargain but does not necessarily demand our obedience. And while may not have a king, we certainly live in a culture that demands our allegiance.

You may not know this, but as church feasts go, this one is a mere pup because Pope Pius XI first established the feast of Christ the King only a hundred years ago. 1925 was a time of gathering darkness throughout Europe and Asia, still recovering from the horror of the First World War, the world was beginning to be gripped by nationalist, secularist, anti-Semitic movements led by authoritarian fascist and communist dictators or wanna-be dictators that may look vaguely familiar to us today. Pope Pius’ goals were to refocus the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth, to remember that as disciples of Jesus before these ideas took hold. He taught that we are to serve the world as Christ did: loving God and all people as neighbors – even to the point of praying for and loving our enemies. Jesus’ reign is a reign of service, and our power comes from the Holy Spirit, and our task is to love others as our Risen Lord and King loves us.

Today we live in a world, with two competing yet parallel idols: Christian Nationalism, a profound heresy that defines Christian faith in nationalist and racial terms, as well as a culture that defines our values by the things we buy and have. The theologian Harvey Cox once said that our culture’s true civil religion is called “The Market,” which has evidently decreed that we will dispense with Thanksgiving and start that most holy of days “Black Friday” a day early!

Nathan Duggan who teaches Christian stewardship through a program called Share, Save, Spend reminds us that the National Retail Federation expects "About 33 million people will shop on the (thanksgiving) holiday itself, and a slew of retailers including Macy's, Wal-Mart, Target... and Kohl's will accommodate them."

We shouldn’t be surprised. Not really. Every week, the busiest retail day of the week is…right now. Sunday morning. And, as things are going, the busiest retail day of the year could become Thanksgiving Day itself instead of the day after.

Needless to say, this is a challenge for people of faith. Something that we must deal with every day—and (before we fall into pearl clutching…) we’ve had to deal with this for as long as there have been people of faith.

Which brings us to the feast today. If Christ is our King, if we are living in God’s reign, how can we, in the midst this planned frenzy, take the time to give thanks, to be with family, to come together as a community and remember who and whose we are?

It is hard in our world to make space for Sabbath, for thanksgiving. The world’s idea of a “holiday” is to take an extra day to do more with more intensity the same activities we do every day. 

This is one of many reasons that we end the Church’s year remembering Christ’s reign and Jesus’ Lordship. Every day we have to choose who we will we follow. And the fact that the world’s values clash with what God wants for us is not only not new—it is the very heart of the matter! It why Jesus came among us in the first place. \

We hear in today’s Gospel how Jesus was called a king. It was not the first time that holy week. Remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed young colt trailed by a donkey, in the middle of do-it-yourself parade of cloaks and palms? Instead of a parade surrounded by soldiers and carried in by conquered slave, he was showing from the get-go that God’s reign, God’s kingdom was different. This did not make the powers that be happy. So at his crucifixion, when they hung the sign “This is the King of the Jews” on the cross to identify both Jesus and his crime it was an act of derision, an insult both to Jesus and to the Jewish people whom the Roman’s occupied. 

So the people witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion joined in the mockery, laughing at his failed and pathetic kingship. “He saved others,” they said. “Let him save himself if he is king of the Jews!” Even one of the criminals crucified with Jesus joined in. “Save yourself and us!” he says from his own cross.

Oddly enough, this mocking thief will get what he asks for…just not in the way he expects! Because while Jesus’ persecutors and prosecutors saw Jesus’ kingship as a political, an economic, or even a military kingship whose only measure was (and is) “how can you use your power to make more power?” Jesus instead saves the thieves—and us! By entering into the darkest places of our lives, where our deepest fears reside, and into death itself, and He reunites us with God, heals our broken souls, and makes us one with each other and creation. The very source of his humiliation and defeat becomes the means of Jesus’ glorification and of our salvation.

The other thief being crucified with Jesus saw this and said so. Tradition calls this so-called “good” or “repentant” thief Dismas. As these men meet each other on their points of their own death, Dismas says to his companion on the cross “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Suzanne Guthries observed that a cynic might say that Dismas has nothing to lose by such a request besides some precious air in his lungs. But this is no hedging of bets. Dismas sees through the horror of the cross and sees the kingdom's throne. And Jesus manages to gasp out these words: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

We baptized Christians are citizens of that very kingdom that Jesus welcomed Dismas into. We have through our faith and baptisms given ourselves to the One who created all things, rules all things, and animates all things. We believe that Jesus is God’s word who spoke all things into being and who will also speak all things into completion.

We are ambassadors of Jesus’ reign to this world and in our daily living we represent God’s reign, God’s time, to a world that is stuck in that weird collision of the humdrum and the crazy-busy. As we wrap up one Church year and move into a new one, we are confronted with the collision of the everyday world and God’s eternal reign.

So how we order our lives is very important. Will we choose to live in solitary reactivity or in Christian community? Will we pray only when things are tough and then only by ourselves or will we gradually and intentionally turn our prayer into a habit where even our private prayer is in concert with God’s people.

Do we choose to see the world as God’s and as our arena for mercy, compassion and service? Do we allow the rhythm of the sacraments to become our heartbeat and our breathing?

This is our challenge everyday as Christians, to remember that we live in God’s time, God’s reign, with Jesus as our Sovereign, our Lord, our Master. We are Jesus' friends and apprentices.

At this moment, we end one year and start a new one at the cross where God’s reign collides with and overcomes the reign of sin and death. And at this moment, our prayer is the same as that repentant, dying thief… in the midst of all the chaos of living, in the midst of all our choices past and yet to be made and even at the end, our prayer is the same. “Jesus, King of Glory, remember me in your kingdom!”

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Scripture for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 29, Year C, November 23, 2025

Website for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, November 23, 2025, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Jumping into the Bible with both feet

A friend of mine told me this would happen that when I became a grandparent, it would be life-changing, life-challenging and an awful lot of fun. And one of the things I love to do the most with my grands is to read out loud to them. My wife and I like to take the kiddos to the library or the bookstore, and along the way we’ve built a pretty good little children’s library of our own. We keep the books at kid level, so they can freely pick out a book and either look at it themselves or ask one of us to read to them.

Now we come by this naturally. My wife’s parents were both teachers, and my mom was a librarian, and I still remember my father reading aloud to me and my brother when I was small.

And you know what? Children’s literature is amazing! Stories written for kids contain a lot of truth about life, the world, and what it means to be human. Adults would do well to read more children’s literature, because you never know what a rabbit, a stuffed bear, a dragon, a magical school bus, or a kid on a cosmic adventure might teach us!

Do you have a favorite children’s book? While we all have our favorites, there are two, that are favorites of mine and I think speak to our life as Christians hinted at in the collect and readings assigned for today.

The first is an oldie. The Monster at the End of This Book stars Grover of Sesame Street fame. Grover has read the title of the book and tries very hard to convince the reader to stop reading. Grover does not want us to get to the end of the book. From the very beginning, Grover “breaks the fourth wall” and talks to the reader directly. [And, for some reason, when I read this aloud to the Grands, my voice changes to become very Grover-like!] 

Of course, the book can’t go on without the reader reading, which makes Grover try even harder to stop us; and, I don’t want to give anything away, but the monster at the end of the book turns out to be Grover himself! 

Another wonderful children’s book is one you might never have heard of. It was written by Nancy Patz and is called Pumpernickel Tickle and Mean Green Cheese. In that story, Mom asks her son to go to the corner store and buy one loaf of pumpernickel bread, one pound of cheese, and one very fresh, very green, very big dill pickle. As the boy and his friend (a very silly stuffed elephant) walk through their Baltimore neighborhood, trying to remember the list and of course mixing it up into something very silly – of course, they forget what they were going to the store for! Still in the end, they finish their journey, get what they are after, and bring it home, where they have a nice lunch with Mom.

This is wonderful, I hear you say, but what’s this got to do with today’s readings? Well... Everything!  A few minutes ago we prayed, to God “who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning” that we’d have the grace “to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ....”

This is the only collect in the whole Book of Common Prayer that explicitly refers to the Scriptures themselves. It claims that God is the one who is the source and cause of the writing of Scripture. It does not get into the mechanics of how that happened; it simply says that God is the cause of Scripture. 

Episcopal priest Fr. Joshua Bowron suggests that we are encouraged to engage in Scripture in four ways:

First, we are invited to simply hear the Scriptures. Hearing is a funny thing because we can’t hear more with effort, it is just something we have to allow. We also cannot unhear things, can we? A lot of these stories are familiar, so put aside what you think you know and just listen! If we can hear with new ears, then we’ll be awakened to the newness and wonder of what God is doing. 

Next, the collect encourages us to read the Scriptures. How often do you read Scripture? Sunday mornings we get a great deal of Scripture, both from the lessons and in the liturgy, but how about Monday through Saturday? The Church has long given testimony to the transformative power of daily Bible reading. Forward Day-by-Day and The Daily Office are good places to start!

The collect now gives us a very funny word. What does it mean to “mark” the Scriptures? This prayer was written way before highlighters or even pens were invented, so it doesn’t mean that we mark up our Bibles literally, though doing that might be useful. (There is no prohibition against underlining or making notes in your Bible… I have an old Bible that is like an old friend to me because it has over fifty years of highlights, underlines, and notes in it!) But what “marking” means is that we stop from to time to time and see the gravity of a particular passage and then take the time to reflect and ponder it. We are invited to ask what it is saying to us. What was going on when it was first written? How have faithful people interpreted this passage over time? And in interrogating the passage in that way, we mark its power; mark how it makes us wonder; so we can ponder what God is saying to the people of God and then act on it.

We are encouraged to learn the Scriptures. For too long, Episcopalians have ceded knowledge of the Bible to other groups. I don’t know about you, but for a long time, I always felt kind of beat up by people who could quote chapter and verse at me, usually to tell me that I, or my tradition, was wrong about something—especially something I was passionate about! We should not be ashamed of what the Scriptures say and instead should know them well enough to live by them. This leads us to the last way of engagement described in today’s collect.

How do we inwardly digest the Scriptures? Now, isn’t that a strange image? Or maybe not! There is a rabbinic tradition that a small dab of honey is placed on a scroll of the Torah for children to lick to understand the sweetness of the word of God. St. Benedict urged his monks to ruminate upon Scripture throughout the day. Do you know what a ruminant animal is? It’s an animal that digests food in stages— you know, like a cow, chewing the cud. And maybe like one of those animals, we need to come back to Scripture time and time again in order to digest it properly. 

In other words, instead of keeping the Bible at a respectful distance, we are encouraged to jump into Scripture with both feet!

Very often, we simply accept what a particular passage says without much thought. That’s like stopping one’s ears and singing “la la la.” Instead, allow a passage to settle into your very being. Let it reside there. And while it’s there, allow it to inform your experience. Ask where you agree or disagree, where it causes a pinch, and where it challenges you to grow.  Go ahead and turn it over in your mind. See what happens. This kind of reading and rumination will keep the Scripture with you like a pebble in your pocket.

However you do it, jumping into the Bible with both feet will change you! This kind of conversation with Scripture, and Tradition and Reason is the launchpad for a new, dynamic relationship with God. Without this give and take, then the Bible simply becomes an idol ... or, worse, a dust-magnet. 

Remember, the Bible just didn’t pop out of the air fully formed and edited, but it was gathered over a long period of time… first in the Hebrew Scriptures and then in the early Church. In fact, it was the same Church council that gave us the Nicene Creed that finalized what would be in the Christian Bible…and that was 400 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension!

So how did the Church get along for four centuries without a finalized Bible in their homes and churches? Well, in much the same way we get along with the Scriptures that we have today… by simply being the Church! Like those early Christians, we are followers of Jesus Christ. We are his friends and apprentices who are learning and doing the work of Jesus every single day!

Today’s collect invites us to jump into the Bible with both feet because we are kind of like the “monster at the end of the book!” We are part of the community that wrote that book we call the Bible, the Church. It is fairly mind-bending to consider that the New Testament was written by people who gathered in their congregations just as we do every Sunday. And just like us, they told the story of Jesus and his followers. And just like us, they asked questions and worked out what it means to follow Jesus and how to faithfully live in community serving the people around us. They (and we!) imagined what God is up to in the world and where God is taking us! We are not only people of the book; we are experiencing what that book talks about every day!

Reading the Bible can be a solemn thing. Our lectors work hard to read it well (and they do!). But sometimes I like to imagine myself reading the Bible the way I read a story to my Grandkids, with voices, whimsey, and weight. And that’s how the Bible was remembered long before they wrote in scrolls or printed it in books… by telling the story together! So I invite you to imagine yourself, when you are reading the Bible, to go ahead and “be the monster at the end of the book” and find all the ways to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the text so that we will engage Scripture, and be transformed by it, and more and more live it. Because, as we do that, we become more and more the Gospel Story for a world that’s so desperate for hope, love, and Good News.

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Scripture for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, Year C, November 16, 2025

Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, November 16, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.

Grace over bondage

It’s probably safe to say that the typical Christian in today's world doesn't read an entire book of the Bible in a day. And even safer to say this usually doesn't happen before lunch.

Well, I want to congratulate our lectors this morning, because that’s exactly what they did! Yes, you, too, can go home astound your friends and family by telling them “I read a whole book of the Bible today!”  Or, you can flop down in the living room chair and exclaim “Whew! Today I sat in church long enough for them to have read a whole book of the Bible today!” That’s got to be worth something! Yessiree! Our lector read a whole of Paul's Letter to Philemon, (well, except for four verses that the lectionary people cut out for some strange reason, but that’s close enough.)

Okay, okay, Philemon isn't a long theological treatise like Romans or Galatians. It’s not a double-barreled letter like 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians. By comparison, it’s kind of a bookmark. Or more precisely a bookplate. But it gives Paul and a few other early Christians a very human face because it sheds light on a culture that is so very different from ours and a glimpse of how real, live early Christians actually lived their lives.

Here's the story: Onesimus was a slave, and he was a Christian. Philemon was a Christian, too. But Philemon owned Onesimus. Apparently, Onesimus ran away or else did something against Philemon's wishes. And after Onesimus ran away he somehow ended up working with the apostle Paul.

Paul is schmoozing Philemon, laying it on thick, because he wants Philemon to let Onesimus go so that he would have the freedom to travel with Paul. Was sending Onesimus home to be freed and reconciled or would he face the music instead?

Notice that Paul is not above a little Christian arm-twisting, because even though the letter is written to one man, you know that the entire congregation or cluster of congregations around Ephesus, where Philemon lived, was watching to see what he would do. Would he welcome Onesimus home as a brother in Christ or take him back as a runaway slave and punish him? Of course, Philemon could have split the difference: welcome Onesimus home as a Christian slave with little or no punishment. But that’s not what Paul was asking…he wanted Onesimus to come back to Paul a free man.

Okay. That’s nice. So what? This letter is so short that it’s practically a bookmark in the New Testament. The average Christian doesn’t even know it’s there. And, besides, the letter’s context is so totally and completely different than ours that it might seem totally irrelevant to us. (By the way, in the ante-bellum South, slave owners hated this letter and either twisted it justify themselves or wished it was cut out of the Bible entirely!)

But look again. Here are three people (Paul, Onesimus and Philemon) struggling to live out their faith while being challenged by it over and over again. There’s an awful lot packed into a couple dozen Bible verses!

I don’t know about you, but what Jesus says in today’s Gospel makes me pretty uncomfortable, too. He says that when we follow him, we are to hate—hate! —family, kinship, possessions, and everything we hold dear. What Jesus means is that it will take work, discipline—and practice! — to put Christ at the forefront of our living and following Jesus will challenge our priorities and change our decision-making. If you don’t believe me, ask Philemon.

Paul is asking Philemon to put aside his pride and treat Onesimus as a brother in Christ. It doesn’t matter if Philemon is right and has custom (and the law!) on his side. Paul in fact sets that all aside when he to writes Philemon these words, “I am sending him back to you, no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.” Look at what Paul is doing. He does not appeal to Philemon on the basis of law, but on the basis of love, in verse eight, he says: “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”

Paul is asking Philemon as a true Christian to accept Onesimus back as a brother in Christ, and not as a slave under the law! Paul is asking Philemon the slave-owner to receive Onesimus, as a Christian brother. Paul is asking Philemon to choose grace.

The brilliance of this move is that Paul neither breaks the law of the land nor the law of the gospel. He says, “Yes, go back to your former home, but as new people in Christ.”

I love this little letter because it shows us what faith looks when the rubber meets the road. And it also shines a harsh light on the goings on in today’s world. I mean, what issues and relationships try our faith today? If someone were to appeal to us on the basis of faith to change something in our lives, what would it be? And what would be the effect of that change? In a world where people get wound up over everything from migration to wealth and poverty, to how we might deal with school shootings and who go mildly berserk over how we memorialize the victims of night-club massacres-- I mean, painting over cross walks at 3 a.m. Really?-- what Paul is asking of Philemon cuts to the quick. 

And just in case you think that I or someone in the Episcopal Church chose this passage just to needle us, remember that this letter was written two millennia ago and was added to the lectionary fifty years ago. After all that time, the promise of this little letter shows us that the deeper we go in our Christian living, and the more we conform our lives to Christ, the bigger the change we will see, the greater the challenges we’ll feel, the more lives we will touch with grace and hope.

So, how did it turn out? What did Philemon do? What happened to Onesimus? We don’t precisely know but we have some clues. 

There's some evidence in the early Christian church that there was a "Bishop Onesimus" in the city of Ephesus in Greece, a church founded by Paul. The story goes that this Bishop was so grateful for the witness and Christian love of St. Paul that he preserved many of his epistles. And to prove his bona fides to collect Paul's epistles, he included this little letter showing how he was freed from one life and set on course for something new.

Today we’ve had a taste of what first century Christianity was like in the first decades after Jesus’ resurrection.  And guess what? It doesn’t look all that different from what people like you and me must deal with every day!

Imagine what would happen if Christians today approached each other and our tough choices with the same sense of prayer, compassion, risk, and hope that Paul, Onesimus and Philemon exercised together! What would life be like if following Christ was more important in our everyday living than kinship, politics, country and custom? Would it be easy? Probably not! Ask Philemon! Would it be life-changing? You bet! Ask Onesimus! Would it make a difference? Look around! Because right here, right now, is what faith looks like where the rubber meets the road.

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Scripture for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, September 7, 2025

Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, September 7, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.

Friend, Come Higher

There is this old routine done by the late puppeteer and ventriloquist Shari Lewis where she is talking with her hand-puppet friend, Lamb Chop, about her (Lamb Chop’s) table manners.

Lewis says to Lamb Chop: I was very disappointed in how you acted when we had dinner guests last night.

Lamb Chop: Why? 

Shari: Because when the food was set at the table, you just grabbed all the food off the plates and ate it up before anyone else had a chance!

LC: Oh. (pause) Well, what would you have done?

Shari: I would have waited to go last.

LC: Well, you were last, so what’s the problem?

And it goes on like that, back and forth with Shari trying to teach little Lamb Chop in vain about how to be a good guest and how to be a good host.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus at the home of a Pharisee trying to teach him about how to be a good guest and how to be a good host.

All through his Gospel, Luke shows us Jesus eating and drinking and with all kinds of people, from Matthew, the hated tax collector, right through to his Last Supper at Passover with his disciples.  Luke’s Gospel tells us how Jesus fed the multitudes...twice! In Luke’s Jesus is at table with everyone, rich and poor, men and women, you name it!

But why all this eating and drinking? For Jesus, the meal, the table and the banquet, is an image of what God’s reign in like. He says that being in relationship to God is like being at a feast…where only strangers and the poor are invited!

Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like coming in to the party and not only being greeted but being escorted to the best seat in the house.  We don’t need to bluster, bully or pretend. And we certainly don’t have to reach across the table and grab what we want and stuff our faces. We don’t need to charm the bouncer at God’s banquet, either.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that at God’s banquet, we are seen for exactly who we are and—surprise! —we are invited to the head table!

But wait! There’s more! Look at Jesus’ invitation list. His banquet is open to everyone! Typically, we invite only people we like, or people we want to impress, or people who are like us, people we don’t want to offend. That’s natural. But God want us to live beyond the natural, to go the extra step into the supernatural: invite the stranger, the poor, the hungry, the outcast. Now maybe we don’t do that in our homes, but we can certainly do that here.

Jesus teaches us to welcome—and, more than that, to invite and usher in—to the table everyone who hungers, especially those whose hunger is beyond our ability to feed. Look at what Jesus teaches in the Gospels: the banquet, the feeding of the four- and five thousand, the communion table, the cross, all show us that God’s love is for everyone! And God’s grace is better than any heavenly Uber-eats because we don’t so much go to the banquet, but God brings it to us, where we live, as we are.

Are you a fan of old movies? I am! One of my favorite films is called "Places in the Heart." It pops up from time to time on one of the cable networks or you can find on Tubi or Amazon Prime or one of those. Set in Texas during the 1930s, “Places of the Heart” is a film about survival in the face of very difficult circumstances.  It talks about overcoming hatred with love, and how grace happens even among broken, imperfect people. Sally Field plays a poor widow with small children, and she won an Oscar for her role in this film.  Her character takes boarders into her home to help make ends meet on her dirt-poor farm. In the film, the two borders are a blind man, played by John Malkovich, and an African-American man, played by Danny Glover.  Glover is also her farm hand and farm manager and faces overt –sometimes violent – racism from Field's white racist neighbors. Malkovich is blind but he sees the world for what it is. Every meal that is set for the family and the guests becomes a kind of ritual, a meeting place, and a touchstone for whatever else is going on.

What I remember most is the final scene, set in a small country church during Holy Communion.  As Communion is being distributed, the camera shows us the congregation.  There, all around Sally Field's character, are not just the congregants, but also all the people who are and have been important in her life, both the living and the dead.  Despite all the conflict and difficulties of life and all the imperfections of that community, there they are. It’s not just a church service; it’s a heavenly banquet attended by the communion of saints.

Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, reminds us of how Jesus’ teaching and ministry was all about embracing the outsider, the outcast, the stranger, and the migrant. He says:

‘How often have you been at a social gathering and gravitated towards the most popular, powerful or supposedly “important” person in the room? It’s natural; maybe this person has become popular because of some talent or notable accomplishment. So perhaps the “popular” person seems more interesting. But often we gravitate towards that person because of our own desire to be seen as popular, powerful or important as well. That is, we hope for a kind of “rubbing off” of the person’s importance.

“It’s natural, but it’s not what Jesus asks of us. When I [Martin] was in high school, one of my friends regularly spent time with fellow students who were seen as “uncool.” This impressed me deeply. It was like he had some sort of superpower: He didn’t care if others saw him as uncool. It was more important for him to treat others with dignity and kindness.

“Who are seen as “outcasts” today? That depends on what social milieu you are in, but you might say transgender people, migrants and refugees, the poor, homeless men and women, sometimes the elderly. Most of us aren’t so callous as to shut them out (though some people do this publicly, and even gleefully), but are there times when we could be more welcoming? It’s important to say without irony what we all want to hear ourselves: “Friend, come up higher.”

Jesus takes it a step further. Instead of taking the place of honor, take the place of humility… join with the outcast, the left behind, and the stranger and the host of the banquet, God our Creator, will say, “Friends, come up higher.”

A long time ago, when I was a student at Drew University, a Methodist-related college in New Jersey, I went to chapel every Tuesday night for Holy Communion. And every week, the celebrant (a religion professor and Methodist minister) would recite these words from a hymn written by Charles Wesley, Anglican priest and, with his brother John, founder of the Methodist movement, that went like this:

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast;
let ev'ry soul be Jesus’ guest.
Ye need not one be left behind,
for God hath bid all human-kind.

The Prayer Book has the rubric that when the consecrated bread and wine is presented to the assembly, the words “The Gifts of God, for the People of God” are said by the Celebrant. And over the course of my ministry it has become my custom to say something like to everyone at the offertory, “…this is Christ’s table, and you are all welcome to it.”

And you know what? Whenever I say that invitation, something like that movie image comes to my mind. Here we gather, in Christ’s presence with all the people who have ever touched our lives, some living and present, some moved away and moved on, some who have died, and yet… we are all here, at home, at table, sharing a great and wonderful feast together.

Whenever we come to this table, we come face to face to two truths: we are, all of us, the humble guest invited to “come higher” and we are the hosts, the maitre de, as it were, of Christ’s banquet who invite all comers, even the lowliest, the most unlikely people to sit and feast at God’s head table.

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Scripture for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, Year C, August 31, 2025

Website for St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 31, 2025, St Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida.