Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, the Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), April 28, 2024.  Readings for this Sunday:  Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8 “Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower” (Jn 15.1). The Gulf Islands, dotted along the east coast of Vancouver Island in BC, are beautiful places to visit and to live, and you may be surprised to learn that they are destinations for wine lovers.   I remember visiting one years ago, and toured a winery that had literally been built out of the stone ribs o ..read more

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Easter Sunday, 31 March, 2024.  Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18   Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? “ (Jn 20.13) There are times in our lives, mercifully rare, we hope, when despair and grief are too much for us, and our only recourse is to weep, and by weep I mean something more than a sad sniffle.   Weeping is a word that we use to describe what we sometimes call, in today’s vernacular, “ugly crying”, when our faces crumple and distort and inarticulate ..read more

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 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Good Friday, 29 March, 2024.   Readings for this day:  Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42 What would our service and our church look like on this day to someone who were to experience Christian worship for the first time?  What conclusions would that person draw about our faith? Recently in the Anglican Digest, an American bishop, the Rt. Rev. Brian Burgess, described an old childhood friend who had reached out to him and wanted to reunite on the weekend of Easter ..read more

  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Maundy Thursday.   Readings for today:  Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31B-35   Note:  I'm indebted to the most recent  podcast on Maundy Thursday from workingpreacher.org and to Johanine scholar Karoline Lewis for her preceptive comments on tonight's gospel.  MP+ Tonight as we begin the Triduum, the great three days of Easter, our liturgy takes a curious and dramatic turn.  Besides reenacting the last supper in the f ..read more

  The information in this latest Gallup poll on church attendance in the US does not really surprise me and I refuse to let it discourage me at the start of Holy Week. Of 15,147 Protestants surveyed, 27% say they seldom attend and 16% say they never attend.  Those figures are within a few points of the 6,934 Catholics who answered seldom or never. The poll also notes that the steady decline in attendance is driven by the increasing number of Americans who do identify as religious. and who are increasingly young adults.    I can only suspect that the percentages of people ..read more

  Classroom, Communion and Creed:   A Homily for the Signs of Our Common Faith Lenten series at Trinity Church, Barrie, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, March 15th, 2024. It would have been about this time of year, 1700 years ago, in the later weeks of Lent, that those seeking to become Christians, called catechumens, would have been preparing for baptism.   As part of this preparation, they would have been expected to learn the statement of our faith that today call the Apostles’ Creed (the Nicene Creed was first written in 325 but did not come into wide use until a few c ..read more

 Catching up with Lent Madness at the end of the week, we find that Cornelius the Centurion tamed one of our Shamrock Saints, Andoman, who goes back to the Emerald Isle.   Likewise, the last of the Grappling Gerties, Gertrude the Great, was pulled off stage by the ecclesial crozier of Ambrose of Milan. Today it's one of the girls from that wacky sitcom, "Rita and Zita", vs that wise and sensible English mystic, Julian of Norwich, and I feel confident in calling this one for Julian. Vote here ..read more

 Greetings saint supporters. Yesterday saw a victory for the Emerald Isle contingent in this year's Lent Madness contest, as Canaire skipped over the waves and left Cyprian of Carthage floundering.    Canaire earns her spot in The Elate Eight and will go on to face either Henry Whipple the Battling Bishop, or Clare (Not a Material Girl) of Assisi. In today's matchup, the pious Roman soldier Cornelius of Acts 10 fame goes up against another of our Celtic Tigers, Andoman of Ireland.  I'm an old and pious soldier so I'm partial to Cornie, but I've been wrong before, and And ..read more