Today's Gospel reading is the first eight verses of the Gospel written by Mark. Here's how it begins: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet... The Greek word translated as "gospel" is evangelion = "good news." So how did "good news" …
Christmas: Story of Liberation
Audio File of Sermon, 28 Dec. 2014 (click the arrow to hear) The Bible is a people's history; but we rarely think of it that way. No wonder we have domesticated the Christmas story by turning it into a festival of gift-giving and consumption, with Santa Claus as its symbol. So the story of …
Twelve Days of Incarnation
CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM! ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΓΕΝΝΑΤΑΙ. ΔΟΞΑΣΑΤΕ. That is the traditional Christmas greeting for Orthodox Christians. It is analogous to the more familiar Easter greeting: "Christ is Risen! Truly he is risen!" The Christmas greeting comes from the first words of the Oration on the Theophany by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, which you can …
A Christmas Community
(I apologize that I had to remove the audio file of my complete sermon, as there seems to have been a technical glitch. In compensation, I'll try to flesh out the brief version of my sermon below. Check back in a day or two to see if I have expanded what is shown here.) A …
You know what is boring?
Audio file of today's sermon "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means …
Marks of Community
Today's Gospel reading, Luke 13:10-17, should be read in the context of the entire chapter 13 of Luke. Jesus heals the woman who was bent over for eighteen years in the midst of various parables and confrontational dialogues. What unifies all these segments of chapter 13 is the idea of community. A careful reading of this …
Priests of thanksgiving
Today, November 30th, we celebrate the memory of St. Andrew the Apostle, the brother of Saint Peter. The Gospel of John tells us that Andrew was the first of the apostles to follow Jesus and it was Andrew who then brought Peter to Jesus. Thus, in the Orthodox Church St. Andrew is called the First-Called. …
Remembering Wilhelm Furtwängler on the anniversary of his death
On this day (November 30th) Wilhelm Furtwängler died 60 years ago (1954). He was, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, the greatest conductor of the 20th century - which pretty much means the greatest of all time, since the 20th century was THE century of great symphony conductors. He was especially known …
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“Everyone capable of thanksgiving”
On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm reminded of a remarkable man who was my teacher at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary: Father Alexander Schmemann. So I want to share a 30-minute video produced by CBS to mark the death of Fr. Alexander on December 13th, 1983. This video is not only a remarkable memorial to Fr. Alexander, …
Why we need Mary
The feast of the Entrance of Mary in the Temple is celebrated by the Orthodox Church on November 21st. According to tradition, Mary was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem and she lived inside the holy of holies. It almost certainly is not a historical event in the life of Mary: Only one person, the …
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