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.
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.
Why does the church observe a feast rooted in the Advent story on May 31st — right in the middle of Trinity season? The answer reveals something surprising about how the church orders time, and something beautiful about the scene at the heart of this feast.
The prayer Jesus commands in Matthew 9:38 is answered in 10:1 — the disciples who prayed for laborers become the laborers. We cannot pray earnestly for God to send workers into the harvest without finding ourselves moving toward it.