Husband, father, and Anglican priest living in the North Georgia Mountains. Sermons, reflections, and articles promoting the "Ancient Faith for Modern Times". Subscribe below to get the latest posts in your inbox.
On the Feast of Saint Barnabas, we meet a man who lived the commissioning of Matthew 10:7–16. He sold his field to help the poor, vouched for Paul when no one else would, and stepped aside so the Gospel could advance. Barnabas sought not his own renown but the well-being of the Church.
Today the Church observes the Feast of Saint Barnabas. He stood before the apostles in Jerusalem and vouched for Saul when no one else would. If he had been wrong, the cost would have been real. He was not wrong. The man he testified for wrote half the New Testament.
The Pharisees had the sacrifices exactly right. They’d lost the "hesed". Jesus quotes Hosea to the Bible scholars: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ Without the inner reality, the outward form is a morning cloud — gone before noon.
The Season after Pentecost is the Church’s longest season — twenty-four to twenty-eight Sundays of green. Not preparation, not celebration, but formation: the slow, sustained work of becoming what the Gospel has declared the Church to be. Trinity Sunday to Christ the King.
The Trinity is not primarily a doctrine to master — it is a God to worship. On Trinity Sunday we look past the acts of salvation to the one who performed them. We have been receiving his gifts all season. Today we behold the giver.
The Season after Pentecost begins tomorrow. The Ember Day gift is this: we begin having seen the King on the throne, having had the coal touch our lips, having said "here I am, send me" before the first Sunday arrives.