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Archive for December, 2009
“Gifted”
1st Sunday after Christmas
John 1:1-5, 14, 16
Every Christmas morning when I was a boy, my father took the same picture. He would position himself in the living room and aim his camera at the doorway that my brother and I would come through to see what Santa had brought. The picture he got every time was of our faces as we first glimpsed what was there.
The funny thing is how the pictures changed over time. (more…)
“Remembering Forward”
4th Sunday of Advent
Luke 1:39-45
Download the sermon (mp3)
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, houses some of the world’s most famous art – works by Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt. Rooms and halls full of pieces by the Masters, much of it devoted to religious themes. Mary is a favorite subject. In room after room, there she is. Putting down her Bible while she receives the startling news from the angel Gabriel. Kneeling at the manger with her husband Joseph, gazing at her new baby. Presenting the baby in the temple. Many paintings simply depict her with her child, in a sort of portrait form. Some show her much later in life, weeping at the foot of the cross. In all of it, Mary is defined by those in the picture with her: the angel, Jesus the baby, Jesus the dying Savior. Her role seems to be to respond, to accept whatever life lays on her – an unsought pregnancy, the birth of a baby, the death of a child. (more…)