Sermons

Pentecost 15 2026

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:34:04 GMT

Our Peppercorn

Our Peppercorn

SO many of our heroes have gone on to God in these last weeks — Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, Wendell Berry, and, if you can believe it, on the very same day as Dolly, Tim Curry. These beloveds’ life projects were very different from each other, yet each of them left a gracious legacy: lives lived with courage, meaning and purpose, with concern for others part of how they walked out in the world — in Tim Curry's case, accessorized with fishnet stockings. Their concern for the wider community will last beyond their earthly lives. Granddaughter Whitley is thrilled every month to get her book in the mail from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, and our global community benefited from Dolly's generosity through her $1M gift supporting the earliest mRNA research in Covid vaccines, eventually protecting us all, whether or not we received the vaccination.

THIS is stewardship. Stewardship is what happens when a person decides she’s a member of the larger community — a bigger circle of concern — than just herself. Dolly Parton viewed planning for the future as a form of enduring hope . Planning is hope in action just as our courage in taking on that planning is faith and prayer in action. We need to lean in and hear St. Dolly on this as we summon our own faith and courage for action to support Emmanuel’s thriving. As our annual stewardship campaign ramps up in these next weeks, it’s time right now for us to focus on how we care for our community.

Wendell Berry, the great poet-farmer of Port Royal, Kentucky — gone on to God this last week — spent seventy years creating prose and poetry about what actually holds a community together. His word for it was membership . In his novel The Wild Birds , Berry put it simply: We are members of each other. All of us. Everything . Berry is writing here about the kind of community of wide invitation and deep belonging that we’re building at Emmanuel. You can see this in the expansive inclusion of our amazing preaching team — women and men, younger, older, lay, ordained, from Newport, the Midwest, England, East Africa, Jerusalem, Australia — representing both the wider Anglican Communion and traditions that are new to us.

You can see Berry’s dream of All of us. Everything … in our community’s every day collaborations: Newport Classical and Emmanuel leaders working alongside the City of Newport and RENEWport (Newport’s council of leaders working for our community’s thriving), Rhode Island public schools, Rhode Island Legal Services, the McKinney Men’s Shelter, Lucy’s Hearth, Laundry Love, MLK Community Center, Newport Prevention Coalition, the Middle Passage Project, Housing Hotline, Newport Mental Health, Rhode Island Outreach, and others — none of us doing the same work, none of us needing to, together building the same beloved community.

Sharing our home — this gorgeous historic register community center and house of faith — Mrs. Brown’s Big Dream for the people of Newport — does two things at the same time: 1) fulfills our purpose of loving our neighbor — God’s law that governs all we do — and 2) provides the very community we need to support this beautiful home for all of Newport. Here’s where we come to what Geoffrey Hoare, rector of All Saints’ Atlanta during our time there, used to refer to wryly as The Sermon on the Amount : About 60 households make a financial pledge to Emmanuel each year, and together we raise around $250,000. That sounds like a lot until you realize that it barely covers the most basic requirements of a functioning parish: a rector, a parish administrator, and a very spare music staff. All you have to do is add a parish life coordinator, music for the choir, Emmanuel’s apportionment obligation to the diocese, postage stamps, and some sheet music, and we’re over budget.

We've gotten resourceful, making a virtue out of finding creative ways to make do with what we have. That's why we have a pickup choir that rehearses only on Sunday mornings — we simply can't afford to pay our non-volunteer musicians for a second rehearsal during the week. Other than our Salve Choral Scholars, Caleb, Music Coordinator Duffy (and Nellie before them), all our Musicians’ Circle are both volunteers and active, pledging members of the congregation, amplified by ringers Nellie, Duffy, Caleb, and Ethan, whose responsibilities as Emmanuel staff include Sunday mornings. Suzanna's role as our Artist in Residence is itself an act of generosity — she shares her talents — and her elegant Yamaha concert piano — as a member of the community.

In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir published last week in The Atlantic , Gloria Steinem wrote, Everything we do matters . Steinem was talking about faith in action, like Saint Dolly’s commitment to planning for the future as a form of hope. In Emmanuel’s own faith in action and hopeful planning for the future, Joe Griffin has joined us as director of operations, to plan, manage, and oversee the daily life of this building in all of its collaborative uses and functions. Joe’s role frees up your church staff — Ethan, Duffy, and me — to do what you actually called us here to do: build community, preach, offer pastoral care, and show up for parish life. This is a big and hopeful change. It should also — with Joe’s effective, knowledgeable, professional management devoted specifically to that purpose — let the building itself begin generating revenue through wider community use that will help defray the very cost of the operations staff that maintains it. This is entirely consistent with Mrs. Brown's Big Dream of making Emmanuel a home for the whole community. But! before we can be that home, we have to be the church — in a great big, healthy, holy way.

Emmanuel’s legal structure is really unusual , and it’s also the very foundation of our thriving. Here’s how it works (this is SO cool!): The building and grounds are owned by the Emmanuel trustees — Deb Venancio, Valerie Martin, Jennie Huttler, and Bishop Knisely. They’re self-perpetuating. The trust was created in 1855 for the sole purpose of providing a home for an active, thriving Episcopal worshiping community in all of its many gospel purposes that you see in our collaborations and in our worship today. The trust provides that we — the congregation — lease this building for a nominal rent each year — a peppercorn , for the lawyers among us, which is the legal term for consideration so small it's almost a formality.

Here's our faith in action, though, embedded in that peppercorn: if at any time this congregation stops thriving — stops nurturing the community, stops fulfilling its function as an Episcopal church — the trustees are obligated to nail a notice of forfeiture on the door, and every glorious use of this building for the whole wider community would end that same day. That's not a remote possibility or unlikely legal outcome. It's just clear and true from the plain language of the trust.

I think it's actually good news. It means the building is bound to the church, not the other way around . So your pledge doesn’t support the building. An acre and a half of historic stone is too heavy for us to carry on our own. Your pledge keeps us — this particular, wonderful, diverse, improbable, surprising, loving, and faithful membership of people — alive and thriving so that all the rest of what’s glorious in our community can keep happening here. This building only gets to be a home for RENEWport, Newport Classical, and our whole community, because we, the congregation, keep following everyday saints Dolly, Gloria, and Wendell, making our planning an enduring form of hope, and choosing All of us. Everything … to be members of each other . Please respond when you receive your pledge letter, and be as generous as you can, in your own way, with your own talents and resources — whatever that looks like for you — in supporting this beloved community that has chosen God and each other. As St. Gloria wrote, Everything we do matters. Amen

Pentecost 14 2026

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:41:57 GMT

Be the Light

Romans 12:9-21 Be the light Susan J. Barnes

⁹ Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰ love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹ Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. ¹² Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. ¹³ Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; ^[ ^a ^] do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, ^[ ^b ^] for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

“Do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good”

Paul wrote those words to the church in Rome, which was already suffering Imperial oppression.

Reading them took me back to an experience at my first call at St. Matthew’s, Austin.

I began in July 2001, after being ordained. Father Joe Di Paola, the Interim Rector, had his hands full. He was doing tender, loving work helping St. Matthew’s to heal. They loved to love their clergy and were heartbroken to have fired a Rector who was a terrible mismatch.

Father Joe asked me to oversee the work of the full-time Youth Minister, Eric Liles. That was a standard assignment for newly ordained clergy. But it gave me pause. I was 53 and single. I hadn’t been around teenagers since I was one myself! Nothing in my decades in art museum administration prepared me for the job. Supervise the youth program? Me?

God is good and merciful. I needn’t have worried.

Eric was a thoughtful, faithful, gifted youth leader. The program was large and thriving. The parents were very active and involved in the best ways. Together with Eric they chose and helped teach the 7 ^th -twelfth grade Sunday school curriculum called Journey to Adulthood. It focuses on spiritual formation, Bible study, and prayer.

What a remarkable program! I was confirmed at about 12 as were most Episcopalians of my generation. In the Journey to Adulthood, confirmation is a later rite of passage, capstone of three years of study and spiritual growth, including a pilgrimage.

I hung out in youth meetings and went on their summer adventures like a daytrip to Schlitterbahn, the huge waterpark in nearby New Braunfels. I had a blast and loved getting to know a group of faithful, thoughtful Christians: parents and youth alike.

Then on the morning of September 11, tragedy struck. Terrorists armed with knives, boxcutters and pepper spray hijacked four commercial flights: two from Boston and one each from Newark and Dulles. Their suicide missions aimed to destroy four symbols of American power: the White House, the Pentagon, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Some Emmanuel members weren’t born on that dreadful day, but they know from their older relatives that it was an enormous trauma. Not since Pearl Harbor in World War II had outside forces made attacks on American territory. Some of us had the horror of watching the World Trade Center towers be struck, catch fire, and crumble in real time—others saw it over and over again as the news programs continuously streamed the terrifying footage. The third flight did hit the Pentagon. But the fourth, intended for the White House, was brought down in Pennsylvania by the passengers. Alerted on their cellphones, they teamed up and courageously overwhelmed the captors—crashing the plane, killing all aboard.

It was a watershed in our way of living and in modern world history. A total of 2,969 people died that day including the 19 terrorists. Terrible as that number is, it was miraculously small.

A stunned, grief-stricken nation shut down. Flights to and from all airports in the USA were grounded—leaving some people stranded here and abroad for days. Volunteers and donations poured in for the rescue and recovery efforts at the Towers’ ruins by the valiant responders; later many of them suffered and died themselves from exposure to the toxins on site. So did people who lived nearby.

There was a global outpouring of support for America. I particularly remember the banner headline on September 12 in Le Monde , the left-leaning, leading newspaper in France. Nous Sommes Tous Americains “We are all Americans”.

It is sobering, indeed, to look back and see how much changed in America and the world after that one day’s events. Our NATO allies joined us as America launched the “War on Terror”, and invaded Afghanistan in October--was the first of our long and continuing military actions in the region.

*****

At St. Matthew’s, Austin, the veil of ordinary life had been torn away from those teenagers. Suddenly, very prematurely, they had to face big, eternal questions: Why do bad things happen to good, innocent people? Where is God in this kind of tragedy? And, urgently and practically, what are we as Christians called to be and to do in response?

The first thing was to pray together. Father Joe sensed that need in us all. He held a service that night. He opened St. Matthew’s large sanctuary to everyone for days. Many people came including some we had never seen.

The Youth had bonded closely in their study and play. Instinctively they got together in the wake of the crisis. With Eric and their parent/leaders they prayerfully combed the scriptures. They were seeking a way to reconcile Jesus’ great, unconditional commandment to love our neighbors with the all too human impulse to strike back.

Ultimately, by God’s grace they came to the passage we just read. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Heaping burning coals on someone’s head always struck me as punishment—such a jarring contrast to the loving kindness in the rest of the text. It was a relief to read commentator Nancy Lammers’ explanation. Paul lifted the phrase from Proverb 25: note it is a quotation. In antiquity, when your hearth fire went out you could not cook. If you got coals from a neighbor you carried them home in a container on your head. The heap of burning coals was a critical gift!

“Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good”.

The thirteenth century Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote “If everything around seems dark, look again. You may be the light.”

In the dreadful darkness of those days, the youth of St. Matthew’s were the light for the whole congregation. With extraordinary spiritual maturity they found, embraced and shared their own call to Christian compassion and love.

Through good times and bad we are called to be the light. When we can’t do that, we can seek God’s light out in others.

Dolly Parton knew that. Her greatness as a musician, a philanthropist, a friend was grounded in her deep faith. In a 2019 interview she said. “There is a God light in all of us…. And we need to connect to that to make us better people.”

Dear ones, the light of goodness and loving kindness is all around us.

Just yesterday Claudia and I were queued up to check out at the Dollar Store. We had chatted with a man and his daughter in the school supplies aisle and laughed together as her younger brothers brought their snack choices to the shopping cart. We saw the family again at the head of the line and were surprised to see them leave without the purchases that the cashier had rung up and bagged. A woman from the group next in line ran to the door and called them back from the parking lot. Without a second thought, her companion had simply paid for their purchases, which they humbly and gratefully carried off.

Ordinary people on an ordinary Saturday sharing their God light in a quiet act of extraordinary kindness to a family of strangers. And we were blessed to see it.

Thanks be to God.

Pentecost 13 2026

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:19:05 GMT

Pharaoh's Amnesia

Pope Leo XIV spoke about music at his general audience this week in St. Peter's Basilica,

leaning on a principle often attributed to St. Augustine: singing belongs to those who love .

Music , the Pope said, isn't ornament on top of prayer. It is prayer — t he place where love finds a

way to say what plain speech can't quite carry.

I've been thinking about that all week, because music itself makes St. Augustine's point

better than any sermon I could preach on two events we’re marking this morning: Suzanna

Laramee's 70th birthday, and Nellie Horvath's time with us as our Director of Music — before

we send Nellie off next Sunday on a new adventure with our love and blessings. Our music

today is love in the most literal sense — people who love this place and each other, gathered in

our shared bond of community. Suzanna, classically trained pianist and co-visionary in building

Emmanuel’s collaboration with Newport Classical — that's reshaped this building into a living

home for our whole community — playing alongside Randy Elkins, our beloved former Director

of Music. Nellie conducting and singing. Artist in Residence Caleb Dinger joining them, and

the whole Musicians' Circle — Randy's original vision, still thriving — adding their own musical

prayers.

We prayed in our collect this morning that we be gathered together in unity by the Holy

Spirit , and that's exactly what our musical prayers are, with all of us adding our own voices,

wherever we are. Each voice, each tone, and each instrument is entirely itself, braiding and

weaving together into something none of us could make alone. That's unity. Not unanimity —

Suzanna, Randy, Nellie, and Caleb aren't all playing the same note (and I’m pretty sure that Jere

Wells is not often in the same key), but it is unity, joining our different ages, genders,

backgrounds, life experiences, and identities, willing to sound different and still make and be in community together. It's the same unity that shows up every week in this community's ordinary

collaborations: Newport Classical and Emmanuel leaders working alongside the City of

Newport and RENEWport, Rhode Island Legal Services, the McKinney Men’s Shelter, Lucy’s

Hearth, Laundry Love, MLK Community Center, Newport Prevention Coalition, the Middle

Passage Project, Housing Hotline, Newport Mental Health, Rhode Island Outreach — none of us

doing the same work, none of us needing to, together building the same beloved community.

Which brings me to Pharaoh. As we read this morning, there came a Pharaoh who knew

not Joseph . That's the King James Version of our story from Exodus this morning, and its poetic

syntax makes it stick in my memory. As we read two weeks ago, Joseph’s 10 older brothers,

jealous for real reasons, sold him into slavery, and he’s dragged away in chains to Egypt. From

slavery in a strange land, Joseph rises to become Pharoah’s number 2, essentially the Chief

Operating Officer of the entire Egyptian economy. When the famine came as Joseph accurately

predicted in his financial forecast, Joseph's grain plan didn't just save Pharaoh’s household. It

saved the whole region, including his own brothers who'd sold him in the first place. That

Pharaoh — the one who did know Joseph — recognized effective, faithful governance when he

saw it, and treated Joseph as a son. Joseph — a foreigner, former slave, and interpreter of

dreams with a super-complicated family history — could not have been more kinds of different

from Pharaoh and the Egyptians around him, but they recognized and celebrated each other’s

gifts and formed a thriving community. Then a new Pharaoh came into power who did not know

Joseph.

You know I love words, so I hope you’ll indulge my close focus on the verb here. In

Hebrew, the language of the Hebrew Bible, the word for know is yada [ya DAH], which has a

broader meaning than our English word. Yada is relational knowing, intimate knowing, the kind of knowing that changes how you treat somebody. It's the same verb in Genesis when we read

that Adam "knew" Eve. This new Pharaoh didn’t just fail to read the briefing materials about

Joseph and his role at the palace. New Pharaoh has no relationship, no regard, no ongoing

memory of what Joseph's gifts in community even meant for the survival, thriving, and joy of his

own nation. It’s the worst kind of cultural and historical amnesia.

Spanish philosopher George Santayana warned that those who cannot remember the past

are condemned to repeat it . We remember Winston Churchill also riffed on this theme in his

comments on political and military strategy. This saying encourages us to remember that we

know each other — in the yada kind of way — that is, the kind of relational knowing that

changes how you treat somebody. Forgetting our yada — that Pharaoh’s Amnesia we were

talking about — leads to suspicion and fear of each other and our differences, and fear is what

drives the rest of New Pharaoh’s story. New Pharaoh takes one look at the thriving Israelites and

fears loss of control instead of gratitude for abundant community. He orders forced labor, and

when that doesn't work, escalates all the way to attempted genocide.

Relational knowing — community — is the antidote to New Pharaoh's amnesia. Watch

how New Pharaoh’s plan is thwarted — not by political power, not by force or armies, but by

relationship, curiosity, and love. That’s why it's the women who save the future, one act of quiet,

loving, God-fearing insubordination at a time. Midwives Shiphrah and Puah simply refuse New

Pharaoh’s order to kill baby boys at birth, telling him that these hardy Hebrew women simply

gave birth on the job and went on about their work. When the frustrated Pharaoh escalates again,

ordering every Hebrew boy thrown in the Nile, Moses's mother obeys — sort of, and technically

— sealing her son into a watertight basket and setting it gently among the reeds, right where Pharaoh's own daughter bathed, while Moses’s older sister Miriam kept watch, ready to step in at the right moment.

New Pharaoh's daughter’s yada — relational knowing — breaks through the clouds of

Pharaoh’s Amnesia hanging over Egypt to feel compassion for a baby. Moses's own mother is

hired back to nurse her child. An Egyptian princess and Hebrew slave woman cooperate without

any kind of agenda. None of them is unanimous about anything — different languages, different

backgrounds, different life experiences — and a shared compassion for a baby. New Pharaoh’s

daughter raises Moses as her own son, and an “outsider” is once again a prince of Egypt. That’s

what unity actually looks like — remembered and retained relationship and community, formed

of difference and held together by curiosity and love. It takes effort, curiosity, and to fend off

the fear of difference that can thwart community.

I took a lot of Latin in college and have sung in many Latin masses. But still it’s easier

for me to hear , and remember , that music is the place where love finds a way to say what plain

speech can’t quite carry when St. Augustine’s Latin words are restated in my own native

language — by the first American pope. And this is exactly why we keep Saints' Days and Feast

Days on our calendar — not as quaint customs that make it difficult for newcomers to feel at

home, but as spiritual defense against Pharaoh’s Amnesia. This Sunday’s Saints Days — the

Feast of Suzanna's Birthday and the Celebration of Nellie's Faithful Awesomeness Among Us —

are doing the same holy work as midwives Shiphrah and Puah, New Pharaoh’s daughter, and

Miriam at the riverbank. They make us stop, on purpose, and remember — out loud, in music,

with joy — how our love, our collaboration, and our unity — not our unanimity — made this

house of God our home. Amen

Pentecost 12

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 23:09:44 GMT

Pentecost 11 2026

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:19:18 GMT

Rivalry

I’m leaving right after services this morning to fly to New Orleans. I’ll be staying with Judson and Sofia, our son and daughter in law, along with grandchildren 2.5 YO Whitley and George — he’s new, only four months old. It’s hard to be Whitley. She’s the firstborn child of two eldest children — the first child, the first grandchild, the first great-grandchild, the eldest cousin — you get it. She’s the focus of all adult attention no matter where she goes, and is funny, brilliant, and precocious — I say as her completely objective grandmother.

Whitley’s with her other grandmother, B, right now, and will get home on Tuesday, AFTER I have been able to spend a couple of days alone with new baby George, getting to know him without unsettling Whitley. When we’ve tried to get to know George over FaceTime over the past couple of months, poor Whitley has had a full-on meltdown, shrieking that George can’t talk to Dede — that’s me — because he is a baby!! Well you can’t fault her logic. George is indeed a baby, and he can’t talk. But I don’t think that’s really the heart of the issue. Rivalry is tough, and as a firstborn of firstborns, I’ve walked in Whitley’s shoes. And I think probably many of us are familiar with rivalry as a sibling, as a cousin, as a student in a class, in the military, on the job, on the dating scene, interviewing for a new job, you name it.

Rivalry is universal, and we see it in its rawest form playing out in the readings this morning, especially with poor Joseph, sold into slavery by his ten brothers. All ten of the older brothers were the sons of Leah, Jacob’s first wife. But Joseph, the youngest brother, was Leah’s younger sister Rachel’s son, the one Jacob really wanted to marry. The rivalry among the brothers runs on multiple levels, and the text doesn’t want us to miss it. We’re meant to stop and reflect on the older brothers’ feelings and motivations, because this resentment doesn’t come out of nowhere. It never does. Remember the backstory: Laban, Jacob’s mother Rebekah’s brother, made Jacob work seven years to marry first cousin Rachel, then switched daughters on him at the wedding — handing over Leah, the older sister, instead. Then Laban charged Jacob another seven years’ labor before he could finally marry Rachel, his original choice. Against that backdrop, the story tells us plainly that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite, not only because he came along after all his brothers, once life had eased up a little and there were more hands around to share the work, but also because he was then Rachel’s only son — the child of Jacob’s old age, and the one who carried his father’s dreams. Reuben, the eldest son, has every reason to be jealous too — everyone knows, even Joseph, that he’s his father’s favorite. But Reuben is the only one of Joseph’s ten older brothers who thinks twice about killing him. When the other brothers plot to kill Joseph, Reuben says, let us not take his life , and then again, as if for emphasis, shed no blood , and a third time, lay no hand on him .

Maybe Reuben is empathetic. Maybe he’s a father himself and feels compassion for Jacob’s paternal love for Joseph. (Joseph is 17 in this story, and all of his ten older brothers are born of one mother, so that would make Reuben no less than 26, if Leah gave birth to them one after the other — definitely father-age in the Ancient Near East). Maybe he’s a dutiful rule follower. I can tell you first hand that firstborns have a strong instinct for duty and accountability. Or maybe he’s already secure enough in his birthright as the eldest that he doesn’t need to worry that there won’t be enough to go around. (Although this whole story today starts with Joseph bringing back a “bad report” to Jacob of his older brothers’ behavior, specifically that Reuben slept with Bilha, one of his father’s wives, so Reuben’s birthright may be at risk because Joseph told on him). Complicated , but nonetheless, Joseph’s life was saved, and Joseph in turn saved his father, his brothers, and, just to make the point really clear, the Land of Egypt. A lot was at stake.

We don’t get the same insight into the disciples’ family systems as we do into Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their progeny. But we do see the disciples jockeying for position with Jesus. Peter’s always trying to rush in with the next big idea, like building Moses, Elijah, and Jesus a house on top of Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration, while the others argue over who is greater, and who will sit at Jesus’ right and left hand. And Peter just had to be first to try walking on water in today’s gospel while Jesus watched. I’m sure we all have anxiety in our lives over whether there will be enough — enough food, enough money, enough recognition, enough love — and what we need to do or be to make sure we’re not left out of God’s plan. But I think we can live in God’s world of gracious plenty if we can keep our minds and heart on what we have instead of focusing on what we think we need but lack.

I’ve been humming Dayenu to myself around the church this week — that upbeat song of gratitude sung at Passover Seders for more than a thousand years. Dayenu means, approximately, it would have been enough , and it names our grateful wonder that any single gift from God would already be more than we deserved, and yet with God there is always more — Liberation from slavery in Egypt would have been enough. Parting the Red Sea so we could cross safely would have been enough. Manna in the wilderness would have been enough, and yet God keeps giving.

Last Sunday, Chaplain Carter preached his final sermon among us, and we blessed and sent the whole Carter family off to Naval Station Great Lakes. Duffy, Nellie, Jim Kaull, and I represented Emmanuel at Chaplain Carter’s End of Tour ceremony at the War College, where I learned that “Chaps,” as he’s informally called as XO of the Navy Chaplaincy School, is everybody’s beloved pastor — not just ours at Emmanuel. There’s plenty of grace to go around. That would have been enough on its own. And yet there is more: we get to be backup family for Brendon and Kensington while they finish out their years at St. George’s.

We saw the same grace welcoming Philip home to Newport after years away. Watching it all come together in the office would have been hilarious if it weren’t so holy — Dave and Jon huddled around a laptop with Nellie and Duffy, scrolling through Facebook Marketplace — I’m sure a new one on Dave and Jon — then piling into Dave’s truck with Nellie’s sister Mary Bridget conscripted as one more mover, the whole improbable crew circling the island collecting secondhand treasure to help make Philip a home.

That’s what it looks like when the kingdom of God draws near — nothing grand, just people of different experience, gender, generations, physical strength — and large vehicle access — going about the business of living in community and finding that somewhere along the way, they’ve become friends. Rivalry, jealousy, and fear that there’s not enough love or blessing or birthright to go around — those are normal, human, understandable feelings. It’s like that with Joseph’s brothers, their father before them, and for most of us who’ve joined their long line

of humans struggling with being human. But God always makes room at the table. Please pray with me that Dede can make enough room for Whitley, George, June, and however many more who come on my lap. Amen

Pentecost 10 2026

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:37:48 GMT

Pentecost 9 - 2026

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:03:45 GMT

Pentecost 8 2026

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:35:11 GMT

Pentecost 7

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:30:39 GMT

Overturning

This past week, we delivered our third harvest from the Community Garden to the MLK Food Pantry — 29 bags of Swiss chard, tender lettuce, arugula, eggplant, and enough herbs to supply Chef Emily with a week’s worth of Newport dinner parties: mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, curly and flat-leaf parsley, and basil. The garden is riotously abundant, and the raised bed closest to Spring Street is flat out of control. A crook-necked squash vine is making a break for the summer traffic on Spring Street, offering drive-by fruit to anyone who happens by. I was thinking about how our crazy garden grows at Thursday’s percussion concert, one of my favorites so far in this year's Music Festival.

The Festival itself reminds me of Emmanuel's gardens — so many people gathering from all over to be nourished and surprised by unexpected insights and beauty. Thirty concerts over seventeen days, sunrise to sunset, at The Breakers, The Elms, the Norman Bird Sanctuary, the Redwood, Rosecliff, the Newport Art Museum — and even here in our own Nave yesterday afternoon, part of our ongoing collaboration with Newport Classical that keeps opening new life and new possibilities for us both.

Thursday night’s piece was Goddess Insect , a contemporary 22-minute concerto for violin and percussion, in its Rhode Island debut. Co-commissioned by Newport Classical, the piece is built around the psychological idea of the "God-Bug Syndrome" — an inflated, sense of self-importance that psychologists might call a “God complex” when it masks a deeper, hidden fear of not measuring up. I know there are times when I feel like a bug in God’s larger garden plan, and just hope that I’m useful in my own buzzy or fluttering bug-like way! The composer uses the percussion ensemble for rustling, chirping insect sounds, with the violin soaring around the rhythms.

Vestry member Laurie Bosman attended and told me at intermission she found it captivating — rattling seeds, brushed sheets of brass, a shaking instrument made of goat hoof trimmings, tuned two-by-fours and zinc pipes struck with mallets, shaken plastic takeaway containers half full of BBs, metal discs played with a bow and dipped in water to “bend” the sound, all of it woven around the violin's melody. Listening with her eyes closed, as the violinist

suggested, Laurie said she found herself thinking about seeds — how they grow, where they land, and what they produce when they germinate where they’ve landed. And we hadn't even been talking about this morning's gospel!

Yet here we are on the 7th Sunday after the Pentecost: Matthew's version of the Sower of Seeds. We tend to hear the parable of the sower, as we commonly call it, as a simple, folksy agricultural lesson: good advice for the gardener (or the disciple) about preparing soil and pulling weeds. But the word parable itself means to overturn or cast aside . Parables are stories Jesus told on purpose to upset what we think we already know. Matthew tells us plainly that Jesus and his stories put all of Jerusalem in turmoil. A parable isn't supposed to comfort our assumptions. It's supposed to overturn them. So here's my overturning question for us this morning: where do you stand in this story? Most of us, I think, line ourselves up as the sower — as the one scattering seed, hearing this as gardening advice about our own effort, our own good soil, and our own diligent weeding.

But what if we tried on another place in the story instead? What if we're the birds, surviving only by what we manage to snatch up along the way? What if we're the weeds — because a weed, after all, is just a thriving plant growing somewhere the gardener didn't want it? (Ask that squash vine making its break for Spring Street whether it thinks of itself as a nuisance or as remarkably, stubbornly alive and bearing fruit.)

What if we're the seed itself? How do seeds behave? What do they do when they’re scattered, and what happens around them when they sprout? Does anyone get nourished? Is anybody encouraged by the blossoms? Do the plants that grow create a resting place where bees and butterflies can feed before carrying pollen somewhere new? Do the roots hold the earth in a hard rain? Do the fallen leaves feed the ground for whatever grows there next? And what if we're the soil? Do we offer a fertile, secure, accommodating foundation where life can take root and actually flourish — even life we didn't plan for, didn't expect, and maybe didn't originally want growing right there?

I think about that question every time I think about our Rector's Discretionary Fund. Friday, I wired July’s First Sunday of the Month collection — nearly $2,000 — to the Mothers' Union tailoring training program in the Diocese of Western Tanganyika. That's twenty sewing machines! This more than doubles what Emmanuel has helped that program purchase over the past few years, and the Mothers’ Union’s next plan is to reach more than six hundred widows living in the diocese. The machines are sturdy treadle models, easy to maintain for decades, and when the students graduate, they take their machines home to start small businesses making clothing for their own communities. DWT Mothers' Union executive director Agripina Mtengu wrote recently that this work isn't only about sewing — it's about sustainability, women's empowerment, and economic independence as real protection against exploitation. A sewing machine plus training is a path to income, dignity, and freedom. That's good soil.

The Mothers’ Union’s work has caused me to reflect on how we use the RDF here at home. For years we’ve used it to provide small, one-time grants for urgent needs — mostly help for folks behind on rent or utilities. But one-time relief doesn’t root and grow lasting stability, and we've been wondering how we can do better. So we're trying something more relational. Rather than simply sending a check to a landlord or to RI Energy and stepping back, we'll walk alongside people — connecting them with trusted partners like RI Legal Services, Rhode Island Outreach, the Women’s Resource Center, No Wrong Door's Laundry Love program, and other local nonprofits, while offering what Emmanuel actually does well: welcome, practical support, and sustained presence. Our focus going forward will be a back-to-work ministry, more like the DWT Mothers' Union's own path to independence — short-term food support, résumé and application help, interview preparation, appropriate clothing for employment.

When financial assistance is part of the picture, it will fit inside that larger relationship, coordinated with other providers, so help doesn't fall through the cracks and we're not trying to duplicate work that other nonprofits already do better than we could. We want to be good soil to support strong roots when that’s where we stand in the parable. Collaboration with with other nonprofits invites all kinds of contribution — practical help, a listening ear, an open door, and the prayers of this whole community.

It lets us walk with our neighbors not only in the moment of crisis, but all along the road toward steadier ground. So, in this parable, are you the sower? One of the birds that eat seeds scattered on the path? A weed pushing the envelope to live out its own truth? A seed becoming something new in an unexpected place? Or fertile, stable, soil? Maybe the overturning truth of this parable is that at different moments, we’re every single one of them — scattering, snatching, stubbornly surviving, sprouting where we're not expected, and, if we're doing this right,

becoming the kind of ground where somebody else's seed can finally take root. Amen .

Pentecost 6

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 11:15:30 GMT

New Paragraph

Pentecost 5

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:34:47 GMT

Mission Work

Pentecost 4 - 2026

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 01:07:25 GMT

Pentecost 3

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:21:57 GMT

Sheep Detectives

Most of you know by now that I’m pretty predictable. I love farming and animals of all kinds, and I love stories. I’ll read a book, a Kindle, short stories in The New Yorker , a friend’s novel manuscript, listen to audiobooks while I work in the kitchen or the garden, or watch stories brought to life on TV. Jere and I have been immersed through the cold winter evenings into the cold spring evenings — that seem to have ended about three days ago — in mysteries of all kinds, on PBS, Britbox, Netflix, you name it — and every genre too from the standard Whodunit to the police procedural , the Locked Room , the historical , the hardboiled and noir — to maybe my favorite, the cozy mystery .

A cozy mystery is usually set in a small, close knit community, and any violence necessary to the plot takes place off screen. I especially love the ones set around a church community, especially when the priest or another religious official solves the crime — think Grantchester, Father Brown, Sister Boniface , and Collateral with Nicola Walker, one of my favorites no matter the genre. So you can imagine my interest was piqued when Nellie and Duffy sent me the trailer for Sheep Detectives , a new movie combining all of my interests — a small community centered on the church, a cozy mystery based on murder mysteries (stories within the story, for you literature lovers out there), farming , and — you guessed it! — sheep .

Obviously , the next logical step was to check out this essential gospel commentary as an important order of church business, so Duffy and I headed out Thursday afternoon to the Jane Pickens theater to preview this movie for you. Our review? Ask Duffy what they saw, because there will be as many insights as we all have eyes and ears, but from my perspective, Sheep Detectives punches way above its theological weight class for a movie with human actors and talking sheep — CGI generated, for sure, but entirely realistic in context.

These sheep, like me, love a good mystery, and their shepherd, George, who knows them each by name , reads mysteries to them every night. No spoiler alert here — I will not reveal key plot points or the amazing conclusion, because I want you to see and enjoy this movie and then come back and tell me what you saw. I will say that some of the images and perspectives opened new insights for me in our own holy mysteries around the sheep of scripture, and how we inhabit the mysteries of our faith as expressed in the imagery of the gospels.

The sheep, we learn, have a concept of the afterlife but not of death. They believe that at the end of life, they painlessly transform into clouds and ascend into the sky. If this sounds silly, the sheep are just as mystified by our faith claims. As they pass the village church, Lily asks, Who lives there? When Sebastian answers God , Lily reasonably replies, Who’s God? Well I buckled my seatbelt for that one, because God’s people have struggled with how to describe our real human experience with God since before the Gospels were even written down. As we read and pray our way through Ordinary Time in scripture, you’ll hear and experience again and again how often the disciples — and we, listening in today — struggle with articulating and understanding these holy mysteries. God , Sebastian answers, damns things sometimes. Like a beaver? Lily asks. Yes , Sebastian replies, revealing how easy it is to misunderstand a homonym, especially when we’re coming in late on a conversation! God is also, Sebastian continues, both lamb and shepherd, invisible, made of bread, and eaten on Sundays. Poor God , Mopple says.

Both this entirely foreseeable misunderstanding and the wildly holy images and insights that emerge along the way result from our own unique experiences and the language we use to describe them. Language can be really tricky, confusing and enlightening at the same time, and yet it’s the foundation and means of communication, understanding, and relationship. In these days after Pentecost, we find our strength in knowing that Jesus sees us when we feel disconnected. When we are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd as we read this morning from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is already reaching for us, bringing us back into the fold of community. All our unique perspectives and differences are part of the plan — even though that can make things confusing sometimes.

A central theme in Sheep Detectives is that each of the sheep have a name, and the shepherd knows them all. A name represents our singular identity — essential, unique, and beloved by God, called to awesomeness in each of our own ways. Think of our scripture this morning: God has just renamed Abraham and Sarah — formerly Abram and Sarai — for their new lives and their new roles as our forbears in the faith. God calls them by name again in today’s reading, as Isaac is named for his mother’s laugh of incredulity when God told her she’d bear a child after an adult lifetime of infertility.

In Matthew’s gospel, each of the apostles is individually listed and named — Simon, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon, and even Judas Iscariot, because each of us has our own role, unique identity and purpose, a specific place to fit and to belong. The diversity of our individual humanity makes life both confusing and wildly, surprisingly, and endlessly holy. Our name — Emmanuel — means God with us . That’s both our unique identity and our calling. And each of us has our own unique identity, purpose, and calling in this community.

Jesus tells us this morning in Matthew’s gospel that he’s sending us out like sheep into the midst of wolves , telling us that to navigate successfully the peaks and valleys of our individual and collective humanity — the diversity of our language, lived experience, capacity, and needs— we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves . That means making our way with both prudence and purity, alert to danger, but never cynical, manipulative, or harsh. Being wise as serpents and innocent as doves means staying clear-eyed about the world, while keeping a gentle, truthful, and forgiving spirit, and remembering that we all belong. Is this easy? Good Lord, no!! Just ask any of the other sheep. But as Sebastian says — in one spoiler that I will share: We have to. It’s our flock . Amen

Pentecost 2

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:14:17 GMT

It's All About Love, Baby!

Trinity Sunday

Sun, 31 May 2026 17:13:54 GMT

Pentecost

Sun, 24 May 2026 18:01:47 GMT

Feast of Pentecost

Easter 7

Tue, 19 May 2026 11:24:54 GMT

Just Love One Another

It’s been quite a week at Emmanuel! This last week, in addition to our regular buzz of activity — Verizon working in the bell tower, Nasons working on the HVAC system, Gnazzo starting with the mortar and pointing, painting and lead abatement ongoing in the apartments, hydroponics monitoring and harvesting, Community Garden dreaming and planting, pollinator garden spring care, and we had Salve interns with us every day. We’re sharing these civic engagement interns with RENEWport in a program led by political science professor Mary Anderson, and these amazing young women will be back with us again all this coming week.

We’ve been praying with and for the McBean Foundation as they met Thursday to consider, among other things, our application for fund increases for the window restoration and mortar project. Emmanuel and Newport Classical’s Joint Operating Committee met again, working together collaboratively to build our future in this amazing shared space. Our Salvations are graduating this morning — or playing in the band, or supporting chosen family, and we can feel their absence today. We are so very grateful that Suzanna and Ali are here to support us with their amazing musical gifts. Suzanna, we’re grateful for you every single day, and Ali, welcome home. And Friday night we held the third annual Swing Into Spring dance concert with the Larry Brown Swinglane Orchestra, bringing the whole community together to celebrate how we’ve grown bigger and closer.

All of these aspects of our abundant life together in community — grants, building operations, growing, graduating, and even dancing — are the culmination of long preparation, effort, missteps, tears, recovery, laughter, and prayer. All this happens while we accompany each other through life’s lifiest moments — illness, loss, grief, disappointment, conflict, possibility, hope, holy opportunity, and great joy. In the broad tapestry of our lives together, I can really relate to where we find the apostles today in our reading from Acts. They’ve been talking with Jesus, who’s been back among them in these days of Eastertide.

And now today (or really Thursday of this last week on the Feast of the Ascension) — as we remember and celebrate Jesus’ ascension, we catch up to the Apostles up on the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem — about a 2-3 hour walk. This is the moment Jesus is lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight . So there they all were — like this — looking up in the sky, dumbfounded. And they stay that way! — gazing up toward heaven, until two men in white robes appear and say,“ Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. ” What does that mean? Stop staring up at the sky trying to figure out what just happened. Jesus will come back exactly as you saw him ascend — when you’re all together living out Jesus’ new commandment: Love one another.

Not that the theology of ascension — Jesus’ return to the divine glory he shared with the Father before the world began — is not a worthy area of our focus and inquiry. It is important. But if we keep our eyes on the skies — or looking back to what just happened and how we came to where we are, we’re missing the vital connection of community, which is where all the holiness happens. If we lower our gaze, no matter how holy our upturned attention, we encounter each other.

Love one another . It’s a simple message, and super clear, repeated four times in John’s gospel alone, and 13 times in the New Testament. Love one another. Just do it! Easy peasy, right? But is it? What does loving one another look like out in nature, as we walk and live it every day? John’s gospel gives us an example, as John’s Jesus says in chapter 15, No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. That does seem like a really high bar, because we know that Jesus actually did lay down his life for his friends.

What does that mean for us as we try to carry out this commandment to love one another ? Is Jesus asking us to be superheroes, rushing into dangerous situations to protect our friends from physical, emotional, political, legal, or economic harm? I don’t think so. As my friend former All Saints’ Atlanta rector Geoffrey Hoare often said to the All Saints’ vestry — usually to talk us down from one of our latest ideas to save the world (or the at least the Midtown Atlanta block where All Saints’ was situated), “ the job of savior has already been filled; Jesus saw to that. ”

So what does it mean to lay down one’s life for one’s friends? I wonder if it means something much different from actually dying for each other, maybe something both less extreme and much more difficult for us to do. I think that this commandment is not about death at all but maybe about abundant life. What if laying down one’s life for one’s friends — the very greatest love in Jesus’ thirteen-times-repeated command to love one another — means to lay aside our own selves and preferences and our own way of doing things for a minute to really listen to each other? What if it means responding to another’s vulnerability or trouble not with what we want to say, but with what they need to hear to live their best life, as the Gen Z among us might say? What if laying down one’s life for one’s friends means to compromise, to imagine, to loosen our grip on the way it’s always been done in our own experience and really hear about another’s context in love and curiosity?

What if the greatest love — laying down one’s life for one’s friends — means an astonishing, radical inclusion , bigger and more wonderful than we have ever imagined? During Eastertide, we read from the Acts of the Apostles, the book of all that happened among Jesus’ followers in the first days, weeks, and years after the resurrection. This was a time when the disciples and all who walked with Jesus were still struggling to get their minds around this resurrection thing — what had just happened — and what it meant for everyday life. They were not meeting to figure out whether to use purple or blue vestments during Advent, or whether the 8:00 service on Sundays should be Rite I or Rite II. They were wondering how to live together — how to take care of one another, how to work, raise their families, and listen and share across a variety of divergent experiences and backgrounds as people came together in community.

Our challenge and opportunity today is to loosen our grip on our own experience and background to really hear each other’s experience and try to understand another perspective. This gracious friction in our different contexts and needs connects us. It almost sounds too easy. Love one another . Do it 13 times over as scripture says, and then repeat. I’m going to try. I can’t wait to see what happens. Amen

Easter 6

Mon, 11 May 2026 03:09:42 GMT

Mothering God

Loving, mothering God, it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful, and I know it well. Amen

Mothering God

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you — to all of us. Mother’s Day is a time to celebrate God’s nurturing, all-loving power, especially as we watch Mother Earth’s great work of spring. Through God’s good grace, life bursts forth — budding, sprouting, hatching, birthing, greening, blooming, and growing, from Mother Earth’s fertile womb — breeding lilacs out of the dead land , as T.S. Eliot writes. It’s just true that not all of us had a happy childhood or a good relationship with our biological mother, and that others grieve their mothers now and still.

Yet each of us — no matter who we are — can pray for, look out for, and BE the mothering love that we all need for each other. This is God’s tender, nurturing message for us, today and every day. Despite its obvious physiological connection to pregnancy and childbearing, mothering is not automatically linked to gender, age, or biological relationship. Nurturing and caring for life is loving, mothering activity — done by mothers — regardless of their actual gender, age, or biological role. Mother’s Day is celebrated in about 14 countries, including the United States, on the second Sunday in May. France is on its own on the last Sunday in May.

Mother’s Day is a fairly recent and largely secular observance that grew out of Anna Jarvis’s early 20th century work to honor her own mother’s to improve public health and sanitary conditions, reduce infant mortality, and support soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. Anna Jarvis’s original vision was personal : a day to honor and thank one’s own mother. Some of you may be familiar with Mothering Sunday, celebrated in the UK and Ireland on the fourth Sunday in Lent. While Mother’s Day and Mothering Sunday are celebrated in many of the same ways today, Mothering Sunday is older and distinctly Christian, rooted in medieval England. The fourth Sunday in Lent was a day to return home to your “mother church,” the place of your baptism that nurtured and formed you from infancy. Over time, Mothering Sunday became a rare Sunday off for servants and workers to visit their families, giving the day a warmer, personal feel, although it was still deeply rooted in the church.

Even though Mother’s Day and Mothering Sunday are now celebrated in many of the same personal, family-based ways, Mothering Sunday’s origin — the idea of renewing our connection to our mother church — helps us see that mothering, nurturing, loving, and caring are active, holy verbs — the very activity of God. People who mother , regardless of relative age, gender, or biological relation, have compassion . They see and serve another person’s needs and pain just as surely as a mother kisses a hurt and makes it all better. People who mother are servant leaders, and God means for us to notice this! As we read from Acts this morning,

In God we live and move and have our being, For we too are God’s offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. We are God’s offspring, made in God’s image .

So what does God look like? Clearly not like gold, or silver, or stone, or any image formed by the art and imagination of mortals , as our Acts reading makes clear. We don’t have to stand next to one another for close comparison to see we don’t look alike. Even if we look at two people of the same race and gender, from roughly the same culture, of similar age and even professional experience, we don’t look one bit alike, and yet we know we are each made in God’s image. So if God’s image is not our physical appearance — our height, weight, age, race, gender, or sartorial choices — what is God’s image?

I believe God’s image is in how we live and move and have our being , as the reading from Acts affirms. God’s image is in gracious, compassionate service given in humility, empathy, and kindness. Living and moving in God’s image isn’t about doing things the easy way. It’s about being your best self and living your best life — telling the truth, and always being kind. Scripture tells us that loving, nurturing, mothering activity is God’s own work . God’s love is deeply maternal , and God’s faithfulness is like a mother’s love. It is no accident that we see maternal images of God throughout scripture! We are meant to see God’s essential compassion, mercy, service, and tender love, not only in love incarnate — Jesus — but throughout the Hebrew Bible and the poetry of the psalms. God says in Isaiah 49:15:

Can a woman forget her nursing child ,

or show no compassion

for the child of her womb?

Even these may forget,

yet I will not forget you.

In Isaiah 66:13, God says:

As a mother comforts her child,

so I will comfort you;

you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:7, the Apostle Paul says:

though we might have made demands as apostles

of Christ, we were

gentle among you,

like a nurse tenderly caring

for her own children.

And in Luke 13:34, Jesus laments:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings... .

Our gospel reading today gets to the heart of this kind of tough, loving, unglamorous, selfless, simple service: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. What are Jesus’ commandments? They are a mother’s tough love: to love God with all their heart, mind, and strengthen, and to love one another as God loves each one of us . Hillel the Elder, a 10th century rabbi, summed it up this way: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation . Keeping God’s commandments means practicing — every single day — the selfless kind of nurturing, loving, caring, mothering activity done by God’s own self.

Keeping Jesus’ commandment to love one another means always trying your best to do the NEXT kind thing, good thing, honest thing, fair thing, and right thing. Even when it’s difficult, even when you don’t want to, and even when others wish you wouldn’t. Keeping Jesus’ commandment to love one another means doing the kind of selfless, difficult, sometimes thankless motherly work that Jesus himself did, even standing up for what he knew was right when everyone wished he wouldn’t — and dying on the cross for his beliefs.

Look right and look left. I think you’ll see in each other examples of God’s own holy, loving, motherly, life-giving care wherever you turn. I think of all of our nurses — Valerie, Deb V., Deb D., Jackie, Margaret, Danielly, Kate, Lorraine, Caroline and others whose life work is caring, and who now nurture our community in countless ways. And what about our teachers, tailors, doctors, fixers of things, settlers of accounts, cooks and all helpers, and participants in all ways in hospitality of all kinds? This is the activity of our loving, mothering God, a love looks like effort, curiosity, patience, sacrifice, prayer, and a thousand hidden acts of mercy. Mother’s Day reminds us that God’s very nature is love. Amen

Easter 5

Mon, 04 May 2026 11:58:13 GMT

Easter Confirmations

Fri, 01 May 2026 22:36:37 GMT

Easter 4

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:53:44 GMT

Ephesus Again

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. … And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved .

Ephesus Again

I get caught up in the momentum of the Acts of the Apostles — the breathless, action-packed adventure story of Jesus’ followers in the earliest days after the resurrection. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to live in that moment? To witness the violent public execution of your beloved leader and teacher by the governing power only to find three days later, from the depths of your grief and despair, that he was actually alive among you? They had to have been in a state of sustained shock. Trauma like that doesn’t leave us quickly.

They were figuring out what this meant for their daily lives. We know this because Acts is not a record of early Christians’ discussions of fine liturgical choices established as eternal and inviolable laws, like whether to use Rite I or Rite II for Sunday services, or whether purple or Sarum blue vestments are the right choice for Advent. Later religious scholars and teachers developed those traditions as ways of remembering what was most important about living out the good news. These first Jewish followers of their learned rabbi Jesus considered themselves a movement within their Jewish faith that noticed new things about holy living . The Jesus Movement is referred to in Acts as The Way for the first half or so of the book as the movement continues to grow. Remember last week’s reading from Acts concludes about 3,000 people joined The Way after Peter’s testimony that Jesus was the Messiah , and our reading this morning concludes day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Retired Presiding Bishop Michael Curry — the one who made Episcopalians famous with his Royal wedding sermon in 2018— ALWAYS refers to The Episcopal Church as The Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement. Our charismatic, amazing Presiding Bishop was not telling us to leave behind 2000 years of our beloved church’s tradition. He was urging us to keep the main thing the main thing , and to be sure that our infrastructure — our traditions, trappings, customs, language, and rules — didn’t make it hard for people to connect with the church. People can fail to connect or stay connected to the church because the church is inaccessible, because they just don’t understand the dialect their particular church or denomination is speaking, or because sometimes church rules and traditions arise from the necessities or understandings of a different time, and are no longer consistent with the scriptural foundation of Jesus’ teachings or Jesus’ ways of interacting with people.

Stephanie Spellers, an Episcopal priest and former member of Bishop Curry’s national church staff, recently released her book Church Tomorrow? , a reflection on the NONES and the DONES . That’s not nuns like the Sisters of Mercy. NONES are those who would check “none” on a form for religious affiliation. Increasingly, especially among younger generations, folks have been stepping away — not necessarily from God, but from institutions that have felt distant, rigid, or untrustworthy. The DONES are those who have been part of the church — sometimes for years, even decades — but who have reached a point where they feel finished, worn out, or disconnected, and are no longer finding life there.

Does any of this resonate with you? Do you know anyone who used to go to church but doesn’t any more — maybe because of rules about divorce, fears of whether they’ll feel welcome, or whether what happens at church feels compelling and life-giving, filling a need for community? Are there people you know, in your family, or among your friends or acquaintances, who seem disconnected or lonely, hungry for community but can’t seem to find a way to connect? Reading Spellers’ book, I think of the NONES and DONES I’ve met — people who can no longer hear their shepherd’s voice, as John’s gospel put it this morning, and church just doesn’t resonate with them any more.

Here’s what I think: our opportunity in these days is to go back to Ephesus — back to those times when everything was new, before traditions had formed, before the words of the Book of Common Prayer and the 23rd Psalm we read this morning were as familiar and seemingly eternal as our own names spoken in our shepherd’s voice. So if we can’t hear our shepherd’s voice, what ARE we listening to? What does grab our attention? And what are we as a community DOING about it? Are we a community that helps people hear our shepherd’s voice, or one that adds to the noise and confusion? If the church becomes just another voice competing for attention — another set of expectations, another structure to maintain — then we can’t be surprised when people drift away. But if the church is what it was in Acts, a place where people are known, where bread is broken, and lives are shared, where generosity and gladness are tangible — then something else happens. Then the church is not an obligation, but a place where the shepherd’s voice can be heard more clearly.

That’s where I find myself thinking about our Salvations, and about others who have joined our community in these past years — of pandemic, politics, illness, and war, as so much has changed and we’re carrying so much trauma and uncertainty. Like the followers of The Way in the first years after the resurrection, we’re scurrying around with our hands in the air, processing fear, traumatic change, and enormous political uncertainty in real time while simultaneously figuring out how to live our lives together in community, and what really matters in this context.

What really matters is exactly what we read about in Acts : staying in community, sharing meals, and continually promising God, ourselves, and each other that we’ll try every day to do the next right thing, say sorry when we’re wrong and try harder next time, and treat ourselves and each other with love, respect, and dignity. That’s the recipe. Awe will come down upon everyone , as we read today in Acts, because many wonders and signs will be done under these conditions, And day by day the Lord will add to our number those who are being saved… .

The people of God come into this community — NONES or DONES or whoever they are — not because they have spent decades building its structures and traditions, but because they are seeking purpose, connection, a sense of belonging, and a way to listen for God in their lives. What matters most is not programs, rituals, or policies, but authentic relationship. Faith is always relational before it is institutional. And we’d better watch out, because those of us who are here now are the ones who’ll be saved! When we connect with each other, whether we’re giving life advice or helping a friend with their computer, it’s always true that it’s the helper whose heart is transformed. Through our relationships, we’re drawn back into the heart of the gospel.

We’ve seen it happen here at Emmanuel. Our life-giving collaboration with Newport Classical daily builds a future neither organization could have imagined alone. The Community Bridge welcomes everyone to make their home at Emmanuel. Our Salvations teach us what we’d never know without them and expand our hearts beyond what we thought was possible. The Angel Space gives our community a place to gather and form. Yoga gives us new ways to encounter God together. The pollinator garden — both a symbol and a worker bee — helps our whole community blossom and bear fruit, in the Community Garden and beyond. Deep relationship and authentic community bring Jesus among us, so we can hear our shepherd’s voice. Amen

Easter 3

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:59:20 GMT

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” (Lk 24:5)

The great challenge of living well into late life is the loss of so many of our long friendships. Those who have been the foundation of our life. The friends of our childhood, the mile markers of our journey along the path of life. I used to quip that I enjoy funerals more than weddings. You’ve been there. At weddings you suit up in tuxedo or a lovely frock. Accept a glass of champagne from a passing server. Sit at a table, stiffly, with eight strangers. Can’t have a conversation, music’s too loud. Head for the parking lot as soon as the cake is cut.

A funeral is a time of shared remembrance. A time of shared loss as you bid farewell to another close friend. It is a time of shared pain, knowing you will not see that loved one in life again. Yet it is a time of celebration, a time of wonder. In shared words of remembrance, you come to know this departed friend, perhaps for the first time. As you know, I was in the Navy. At the funeral of a close friend, I learned from others present that he, too, had been in the Navy. He never spoke about it. A purple heart was discovered in his desk drawer. He never spoke about it. I learned that every week he visited the elderly, offered pastoral care in a local senior residence. He never spoke about it. Who knew?

Josephine and I were married for 55 years. It was only at her funeral that I came to know her. In the spoken remembrances of her friends, so many friends, I discovered the impact of her life on the lives of others. I had known her in many shared experiences. At home, I witnessed her grace in giving life to our six children. On the road, exploring countless new places, together. But I never comprehended the impact of her life on her many, so many friends. The reception following her funeral was standing room only. During the story-telling, a voice cried out: “What is Joso’s telephone number?” The entire room erupted: “203-869-6953!” Everyone knew. In that moment I came to know her, for the first time. I discovered the living, among the dead.

It is the evening of the third day following the Crucifixion . Those who followed Jesus, his disciples, are overwhelmed with grief. The man for whom they abandoned family, friend and livelihood…is dead. The man they traveled with, ate and slept with for three years…is dead. The man who performed miracles, fed the five thousand, raised Lazarus from the grave…is dead. Their hoped-for messiah, the man who came in power and glory to overthrow the yoke of Rome, is dead. They are confused, frightened. Peter denies Jesus three times. Terrified, they go the mattresses within a locked upper room. Perhaps it was a mistake to follow this man. Soon they will discover how little they knew of this man, this Jesus, during his life amongst them.

Very early this morning, Mary Magdalene and her companions go to the tomb. They discover the tomb is empty. There they encounter two strangers robed in dazzling clothes. Who ask of the women: “ Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. ” (Lk 24) In their moment of angelic inspiration, the women understand. Instantly, they remember ‘all that Jesus had told them:’ “that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again.” (Mk 8:31) Overcome with joy, Mary and her companions rush to reveal their good news to the disciples. To those same disciples who consistently failed to understand Jesus. Peter is the prisoner of his worldly image of Jesus. He rebukes Jesus as Jesus forecasts his death upon the cross. “Not going to happen,” Peter shrugs it off. Mary’s joyful news will not change the unshakeable views of these eleven men. They dismiss her message as: “Nothing more than the useless chatter of women.”

Late this evening, two men travel the road to Emmaus. They are downcast. They have lost hope in the man Jesus they knew in life. They have turned their back on Jerusalem. They walk away from the place where the Son of God was revealed on the Cross. They were told of the empty tomb. But they departed on their seven-mile journey in the freshness of morning. Before they might have learned of Mary Magdalene’s subsequent encounter with the risen Christ, whom she first mistakes for the gardener. (Jn 20:17ff) [i]

As the two walk along the road, they are overtaken by another traveler. One whom they describe as ‘a stranger.’ Jesus, this ‘stranger,’ asks them: “what have you all been talking about…?” Jesus’ is curious. Did Cleopas and his companion understand the Divine message revealed on the Cross? “What have you been talking about?” Now Cleopas responds to Jesus, the central figure of all that has happened in Jerusalem. His words, heavy with irony, ask: “Jesus, are you the only one who does not understand?” Our hope for the world is dashed. Our messiah, the one we relied on to overthrow the yoke of Roman oppression, is dead. Cleopas and his companion do not recognize this man, the living Jesus, from among the dead.

Jesus gently encourages them: “from childhood, you were raised with the scriptures. Have you foolishly forgotten all you were taught?” So, as they walk on, Jesus, the teacher, encourages them to remember the words of the prophets who promised the coming of the Son of Man. And as the evening shadows lengthen, Jesus instructs the travelers in the words of ancient scripture that prophesy the coming of the Suffering Servant.

Would that you and I were with them to hear the words Jesus spoke as they walked on together, towards Emmaus, that evening.

In December, my family and I witnessed the performance of The Messiah , Handel’s glorious oratorio. In that work of power and beauty, I hear the words that Jesus might well have spoken to his companions as they walked on into the darkening evening, along that road to Emmaus.

In these ancient words of Isaiah, I hear Jesus comforting the travelers, encouraging them to cast off their grief. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, Saith your God; For ev’ry valley shall be exalted, the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Be joyful, my companions: For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given” (Isa 40:1; 9:6). Wipe the tears from your eyes. For through his suffering, we receive the blessed gift of salvation. “ He was despised and rejected of men ;” “ Yet with his stripes we are healed ” (Isaiah 53:3-5). No longer is he the prisoner of death: “ Because thou didst not leave his soul in hell ” (Ps 16:10) No, he has risen to the Father: “ Lift up your heads, O ye gates ” (Psalm 24:7). And invites us to enter the universal kingdom of Christ. “ Hallelujah, Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. ” (Rev 19:6)

No wonder the travelers appeal to Jesus to stay on with them for a few days. Who wouldn’t want to remain in the presence of this risen Christ. Now, in their closing moments together, in the breaking of bread and sharing of the common cup, Cleopas and his friend recognize the living Jesus. The one whom they thought was dead. And they rush on to share their good news with the eleven disciples, “I know that my redeemer liveth .” (Job 19:25)

As we are called to do, on our journey through life.

[i] Murphy, The Story of Emmaus

Works Referenced:

This is a sermon delivered to the congregation of Emmanuel Church, Newport, RI on April 19, 2026. I am indebted to the following for their insights into the lectionary: Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, Eerdmans (1997); J. Gilbert Miller,PhD, The Road to Emmaus, Illumify Media Global, (2019); Rev. Richard T. Murphy, O.P., The Gospel for Easter Monday, The Story of Emmaus, Dominican House of Studies

Roger C. Bullard, MDiv

April 19, 2026

Easter 2

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:31:22 GMT

1 9 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin [a] ), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may continue [b] to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, [c] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Good morning, dear people of Emmanuel. Our beloved Andy Ross was scheduled to preach today, but yesterday morning he was felled by a short-term illness. Our prayers are with him. My Lenten spiritual journey has been deeply enriched by The Rev. Paul Dazet, Senior Pastor of Sandy Hook United Methodist Church in Columbus, Indiana. His the writings are posted on Substack as “A Wounded Healer’s Journal”. His Easter Monday post was a quiet, powerful meditation on the gospel for today.

Rev. Dazet’s meditation moves through each moment of the story, drawing profoundly moving conclusions. I decided to read it to you in lieu of the sermon and am honored and grateful to do that now. It is a rich banquet of faith that I think some of you might want to revisit it. In that hope, and out of respect for his full presentation, I’m attaching the link to the post:

A Wounded Healer's Journal - Still in the Room (The Church That Keeps Thomas)

Amen! Alleluia!!

Easter Day

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:26:58 GMT

First Sermon

“Happy Easter. They told the story without me again. I was there before the dawn, before the certainty, before the men found their voices. I saw what they now preach. Yet still, my witness is softened, edited, doubted. This Easter, remember: resurrection was not announced from power, but from the margins. From Mary Magdalene, a woman they tried to forget.”

Esther Mombo, Chancellor, School of Theology, St. Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya

First Sermon

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. The women arrive at the tomb, discover it’s empty, and everything is changed. So why did the women discover that Jesus rose from the dead? It’s like that in each of the four gospels, with the women carrying the news of the empty tomb back to the eleven remaining disciples. The disciples, for their part, respond in various levels of disbelief and even disregard. Homiletics professor Tom Long identifies the women’s astonishing Easter morning announcement as the first Christian sermon ever preached. This Easter news is the starting point of all Christian preaching.

I have to say that the disciples’ response is not very reassuring to a preacher, and particularly a woman preacher — particularly to me . Did the disciples leap to their feet with the women’s news that the tomb was empty? Did they shout alleluia, and run as fast as they could to Joseph of Aramathea’s rock cut tomb where Jesus had been laid? They did not, of course — except (in Luke’s account) for Peter, who’s never afraid to go all in for the gospel, even if he might look a little foolish doing it. Luke’s gospel also gives us the disciples’ dismissal of the good news, and while English translations vary, the theme is consistent: The women’s good news seemed to them like "an idle tale," "empty talk," "a silly story," "a foolish yarn," "utter nonsense," "sheer humbug."

Why is this first Christian sermon so quickly dismissed, even by the disciples — Jesus’ closest friends and followers — whom you’d think would be overjoyed to accept it? Do the disciples reject the message because it’s carried by women? That’s a possibility, but I think it’s way too simple an answer. I think that the women have definitely been identified and set apart, but for reasons much more nuanced and subtle than sexism. First, preparing bodies for burial in many times and cultures is tender, loving, motherly, and achingly sad work, even more difficult after witnessing the loved one’s brutal, unjust, and intentional killing. So, especially in that time and place, the women would have been the expected actors in the scene. Also, there’s something specifically important about women’s connection with building and teaching faith, the role that women are given as the first preachers of the good news in each of the four gospels.

In her excellent book Band of Angels , New Testament scholar Kate Cooper thinks beyond gender to the almost universal role of women, specifically and particularly in the first few centuries of the Common Era. Women shaped community, culture, belief, and civilization itself by rearing families, which included moral and ethical development and forming individual and community belief through teaching and storytelling — forming humanity from birth. What if the women found the empty tomb — and preached the first sermon of the resurrection to the disbelieving disciples — to separate clearly the gospel message from politics and power, instead weaving it into the very fabric of families and communities through nurturing, feeding, supporting, and storytelling?

During Eastertide, we’ll see many women in the Book of Acts — Lydia, the seller of purple cloth, Dorcas, Mary, Rhoda, Prisca, and others. Women were the heads of large households — even households that were leaders in commerce, like small businesses. Early Christians worshiped in house churches , made up of extended families and all the domestic, craft, and trade workers that supported the life of the household. When the head of the household converted, the whole household converted along with her. Just for context here in our lives, Emmanuel has its own roots in house church, with domestic workers, tradespeople, and craftsmen meeting in the kitchens of Newport’s big houses until donors from Trinity formed the trust that built and holds Emmanuel Church today. Notice how many of the Apostle Paul’s letters begin with greetings to women, and to their households.

The gospel of love is a tender and powerful message, raised up from the grassroots in families, households, and communities, and not legislated or enforced top down through empire. When the gospel message is co-opted by power, its essential nature changes. The Crusades, colonialism, many wars, and slavery are just a few examples of how Christianity is distorted when it is appropriated and deployed by power, rather than held and nurtured in the bosom of the community. And while ancient Jewish texts prohibited accepting evidence from women because of the “levity and temerity of their sex,” I think there’s more to the disciples’ dismissal of the women’s news of the empty tomb than either gender discrimination or the separation of Jesus’ gospel of love from politics and power.

Isn’t that just how many of us respond? We don’t listen, we disregard, we try to tame, domesticate, or rationalize the news, because the resurrection is a really bold claim, and taking it seriously is risky business . Putting our trust in Mary Magdalene’s and the other Mary’s first Christian sermon — or any sermon ever preached from the core message of the empty tomb — means taking the risk of letting the gospel affect our lives . This is terrifying — risky business indeed. We heard this morning the guards shook and became like dead men at the sight of the angel, before they had even noticed the empty tomb. And Mary Magdalene and the other Mary hear the angel’s message and run to find the risen Jesus with BOTH fear and great joy .

As Wheaton College New Testament professor Esau McCaulley wrote, they are afraid because they recognize that God’s power is on the loose and might very well unsettle the world . Author Annie Dillard also wondered whether modern Christians really understood the unbridled power of the gospel of love.

The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT [on…] Sunday morning[s]. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.

I’m not saying you’re not safe here at church, any more than the women preaching the first ever Easter sermon were saying the empty tomb was not good news. I’m saying the good news is powerful, and our response to it can be powerful too. It’s easy to miss among the Alleluias, but the Marys’ fear was reasonable. They had gone to the tomb to bury Jesus. They knew the rituals of grief. But they had no idea how to be leaders in God’s great plan of salvation.

Is that us today? We know how to grieve. We know how to name the things that wound us: aging, loss, illness, unemployment, food insecurity, housing scarcity, war, fractures in our common life. But to partner with the living God in reconciling ourselves to one another, to the stranger, to our political life, and even to those who disagree with us — that is another matter. I have to say that I totally get that the Marys were both joyful AND terrified. What if — just what if — we leave here today like we’ve just heard the women’s Easter sermon for the first time? Not like it’s old hat, or "an idle tale," or "a foolish yarn,” but instead the mind-bending news that love, not death, has the last word? What if we leave here today in fear and great joy (after a lovely coffee hour and Easter egg hunt of course!) and hightail it back home to our own Galilees, away from the death of the cross and the tomb and back into life in the world, healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding the hungry, and welcoming the stranger. Alleluia and Amen.