Thus says God, the Lord… who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness….

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A blessed Epiphany to you all! It was so great to join many of you at our annual Epiphany Pageant on Thursday evening – the perfect way to kick off the season of Epiphanytide! And today is the First Sunday after the Epiphany, which is always the appointed day for the commemoration of the Baptism of Christ. This also makes today one of the four major “Baptism Sundays” so-called, for obvious reasons. 

Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Merry Christmas! It is such a joyful thing to see everyone gathered here together on this Christmas Eve to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord and the mystery of the Word made Flesh. Tonight, we kick off the twelve day feast of Christmastide – yes, you heard that right, twelve whole days… so get ready to party! There is, after all, so much to celebrate at Christmas, for this is the festival of the very thing that makes Christianity possible at all, the very thing that gets this whole thing off the ground: the Incarnation of the Son of God. We’re talking about the union of God and humanity here, of heaven and earth, Word and flesh – that is what has arrived into the world on this most holy night! And joining in spirit with the shepherds as they made their way to Bethlehem, we find to our wonder and surprise, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Though we find him as a newborn baby, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, it is the Lord himself who has made him known to us. For this is no ordinary baby; he is none other than the Son of God, fully divine, given for the life of the world by the infinite love of God the Father and the holy devotion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his mother, the Mother of God. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,” the Prophet Isaiah foretold, “ and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’”

We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son our Lord cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself….

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Well, we’ve arrived at last at the fourth and final Sunday of Advent; we’re drawing ever closer to the Nativity of our Lord and the festivities of Christmastide. And so it is fitting that our Collect this morning and our lessons from Scripture are concerned with what was necessary for the Incarnation to happen at all. What were the conditions that had to be in place in order for the Word to be made flesh? It’s an important question for us to ask, because the answer will in turn reveal what is necessary for Christ to “be born in us today,” as the carol sings. However it happened that God became man will be the way by which man becomes God. So this is the question on which the entire Christian life depends. 

Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So I’m not going to join John the Baptist and call you all a brood of vipers -- don’t worry. But I am going to start with a question that gets at what he is getting at, and that is, why are you here? What brings you to church this Sunday and all the other Sundays? 

​Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

After the funeral for Kathy Carpenter was over this past Thursday, I joined the family in driving down to Red Rock Cemetery to commit her body to the earth, where she will rest until the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. If you haven’t been to Red Rock Cemetery, it’s basically a field in the middle of a sprawling pasture, surrounded by the gently rolling hills that give this part of the state its unmistakable beauty, as far as the eye can see. Were it not for the rusty rod iron sign at the entrance, you might miss it altogether. There are few if any trees to speak of and an old silo down the road a bit stands as one of the only signs that there are any people are nearby at all. Except, of course, for the modest tombstones that adorn the field, neatly spaced, bearing the names of the departed.