Author Archives: Saint John's Episcopal Church

Getting the Word Out

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Dear Friends,

Over the last two months, I have made an effort to record the sermons I have preached so that they are available on our parish website. Those of you who have looked for sermons there in the past know that at best, they have been posted sporadically.  I can’t promise you that they will be there every week, but I am making a commitment to you to post either an audio or text version of my sermons on a more regular basis.  Occasionally, our other clergy may choose to post a sermon as well.  If you have not visited the website, you will see when you go there a menu of Posts on the left hand side. Click on the link to Sermons, and it will take you to those sermons that we have posted.

You can go directly to the website by clicking here, or to the Sermon page by clicking here.

Of course, making sermons available in this way is not just a means of keeping us connected with one another, but also a means by which we can spread the word of how we are hearing the Spirit, seeing God’s beauty, and acting in love. If you hear a word on a Sunday morning that inspires you, I hope you will encourage others to listen as well. Let’s get the Word out!

Faithfully,

Tom

This Month’s Theological Book Club Gathering

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This month, St John’s Theological Book Club is reading What Jesus Meant, by Garry Wills.  Wills is a prolific author of books and essays, and has written on a variety of subjects. A lifelong Roman Catholic, he presents a fresh interpretation of who Jesus was, based on the accounts of the four gospels.

The Book Club meets this month on Wednesday, May 23 at 7 p.m.  in the Parish House. Our host this month is Dan Simpson.

 

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Dear Friends,

This past week, I joined colleagues from across the diocese to attend the annual Clergy Conference sponsored by the diocese. Dick and Lyn were also there, and if you have attended such conferences in your own field, you know that time away and together can be rich indeed. You reconnect with friends, find out what is going on in other parishes, and, as is always the case, come to fairly quick judgments about the effectiveness of the key note speaker or content being presented.

To note that this year’s speaker, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, received a standing ovation at the end of her last lecture is to only hint at how compelling and informative she was. Dr. Levine is a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences. She is one of the editors of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, and has written numerous books related to the Jewish world in which Jesus lived and from which the New Testament arose.

A main emphasis of her work has been to help Christians understand the ways in which traditional, but by no means accurate readings of the New Testament, have often perpetuated an anti-Jewish bias.  In her opening remarks, she summed up much of her work by reminding us that we do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus and Christianity look good.

Her presentations were at once scholarly, insightful, serious, and humorous. I know I will be reading some of her works in the future, and we have a copy of The Jewish Annotated New Testament here at the church office, if you are interested in borrowing it.

I’m grateful for the ways in which I was fed, challenged, and blessed during this conference. And I am grateful for your support in providing the time and funds for me to attend.

Faithfully,

Tom