Earth Day: An Invitation to Love
It does not feel like it, but Earth Day has been recognized in the United States for over 50 years. It does not feel like we have been celebrating today for that long simply because we have not really shifted how we understand the fullness of creation care, and we continue to do things that harm the very fabric of creation. We continue to use materials that are not easily recycled – perhaps single-use plastics being the worst among them.…
Sharing Resurrection
At the beginning of the week this week, I began listening to a new podcast being produced by The Episcopal Church. For the last several years, The Episcopal Church has hosted a conference called Evangelism Matters. The conference brought together lay and clergy leaders from across the church to learn in community with one another and to create new ideas for how to go about the business of sharing God’s love with the world in our local contexts. Of course,…
Getting Local with the Good News
“Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you– that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is…
The Walk of Maundy Thursday
Tonight, we begin the Triduum, the Three Days. They are the holiest of days in the whole liturgical calendar, and they are the days that we begin our journey through crucifixion and into resurrection. It is a time for us to reflect on the meaning of the cross and how we are called to make the way of the cross our own way of living. We find ourselves in moments of solemnity and moments of celebration. We begin tonight, and…
March 2021 COVID-19 Update
Dear Friends in Christ, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Savior Jesus Christ. I am writing to you on behalf of our Vestry in response to new developments within the State of Arizona as it relates to the COVID-19 restrictions. On March 25, 2021 Governor Doug Ducey announced the relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions across the state, and I am writing to remind you of the practices at Church of the Epiphany-Tempe and what you can…
Traveling Incarnation: An invitation to Holy Week
A few years ago, in my first or second year of priestly ministry, I was standing in the sacristy of the parish with our interim rector as we vested for the next Good Friday service. As we were vesting for the service, I shared a remark along the lines of, “Well, today we get life and death on a single day – incarnation and crucifixion.” My interim rector paused and asked what I was referencing, and I pointed to the…
Bless the Lord, My Soul
Have you ever had a week in which, by the time the end of the week was approaching, you found yourself feeling…thin? When I am emotionally and spiritually thin, I am without focus or ambition to get much of anything accomplished. It is a feeling of emptiness that tells me that I need to shift my focus, to find some things that are going to provide me with energy and life, and to turn towards the ways that I practice…
Commending the Self
For more than a decade now, I have been using the same prayer practice to begin my days. Perhaps to the disappointment of Anglican purists across the globe, I have opted for something other than The Daily Office as my most regular prayer practice. Instead, I have used a practice that originated with St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits called The Daily Examen. The practice, in its shape, is rather simple, but Ignatius cemented the practice as the practice…
The Fast I Choose
The weeks of Lent are ticking by, and I must confess that I find them to be doing so a bit too quickly for my comfort! It feels like Easter is nearly here, and already, I do not have enough time to tend to the season of Lent in the way that I would like to: through prayer, study of God’s holy Word, and through fasting. I am feeling the pressure of the world governed by the tyranny of time…
Befriending Lent: Try, Try Again
Well, here we are approaching the second Sunday in Lent, and already, I have fallen off the bandwagon of the Lenten practice. It is crazy how quickly something can distract your attention away from those things that you really want to do as a Lenten discipline! I mean, we are ONLY now getting to the second Sunday in Lent! How is it possible that I have already fallen off the proverbial wagon and need to recalibrate things so that daily…
How will we lent?
Lent. It is quickly approaching as we celebrate the Last Sunday after the Epiphany this week. Next Wednesday, we will gather for one of two fasts on the main calendar of the church year: Ash Wednesday. (In case you are wondering, the second day of fasting on the calendar is Good Friday.) We will come together to worship and to enter into a holy Lent as a community seeking to go deeper in its walk with Christ. As we approach…
I Sing a song of the Saints of God
Yesterday after I completed another run on the treadmill in an empty gym, my Apple Watch buzzed with a special notification – the Unity Award in their fitness app. For closing my move ring on my watch for seven days in a row, I was given the Unity Award in recognition of Black History Month. Needless to say, the Unity Award in the Apple Watch is really nothing for anyone to brag about. It has very little to do with…
