Sermons

PENTECOSTIDE (LAST SUNDAY BEFORE ADVENT) 25 November 2018 A Sermon Delivered by Subdeacon Steve Wallace Today is the Sunday before Advent. It is the beginning of the last week of the liturgical year. It is the end of ordinary time. This year our calendar has literally run out of church year. As a matter of fact, we have been at the end of our liturgical calendar for the past three weeks. This is because there are only 23 Sundays of Pentecost in the Western Rit

I. “It was Thursday. The day was gloomy. The snow lay eight inches deep on the ground; and dry, crisp snowflakes were falling thickly from the sky when Father Seraphim began his conversation with me…He sat me on the stump of a tree which he had just felled, and he himself squatted opposite me.” In the late 19th century, a Russian named Nicholas Motovilov set out to meet Fr. Seraphim, today known as St. Seraphim of Sarov. News of his holiness had spread all over the world. He

I. One word is spelled across the newspaper: “Revenge.” Spurned love, jealousy, humiliation…it doesn’t matter what it’s about. It grabs you. Something about the word, ‘revenge,’ is exhilarating. A neuroscientist once used brain-wave technology to study revenge. At the moment we’re insulted, a burst of activity happens in our prefrontal cortex, the same place triggered by hunger cravings. Revenge is like lust, as equally innate and biological. It’s rooted in our genes. This is

I. “Ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). She suffered for twelve years. Day and night her body bleed. The pain never stopped. The bandages were never clean. She was, in the Jewish world, like an AID’s patient in the 90’s: unclean, embarrassing, isolated and hurt. She’d seen all the physicians. None of them helped. She’d prayed to God. Nothing changed. It’s hard to imagine the emotional