Next Sunday, April 9, is Palm Sunday, when we will carry our palm fronds and sing our hosannas, following Jesus Christ and proclaiming him as King of kings. It will also be our first celebration of Palm Sunday as the feast day for Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church. Palmer is not only a...
As I’ve written previously in this season of Lent, Anglican Christianity reads the Ten Commandments as they are described in the Book of Exodus (as opposed to the way they are listed in the Book of Deuteronomy). In his biblical commentary Exodus 20-40, William Johnstone, an emeritus...
A few weeks ago I offered a quick survey of the Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue or Ten Words, for the Tuesday Morning Men’s Bible Study as a prelude to the Sermon on the Mount and for the Rector’s Forum as a prelude to our use of these Ten Words in several liturgies...
For the next several weeks, both the 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. Choral Eucharists will include at the beginning of those liturgies the recitation of the Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus. They are also known as the Decalogue (i.e., Ten Words) and are often divided into two “tables of the...
The word “Palmer” originally meant a pilgrim who had visited the Holy Land, and returned with a palm leaf as a sign that he or she had made the journey. Last November, I was privileged to perform the Stations of the Cross while walking the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem in the company of...
Today is the First Sunday in Lent, which is a time to prepare ourselves through inward repentance and outward acts of love to celebrate the joy of Easter Day. In order to mark this shift into a new season, there are some changes to the normal patterns in our liturgies. This morning, for example...
Today is Serve Sunday! At the end of our liturgies this morning, we will be commissioned and sent out into the surrounding community as teams, not only to serve our neighbors but also to listen to them. There will even be opportunities between the 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. Choral Eucharists to serve...
Mockingbird is a blog that intertwines theological musings with popular culture. One of its essays highlighted a 2011 science fiction series called Terra Nova. The basic premise was that humanity, having turned the earth into a wasteland, had been given a second chance. Colonists...
Living in the City of Houston provides us with incredible opportunities to participate in cultural and intellectual events. Throughout the year, I’ll invite you and your friends and neighbors to join me in some of these activities that might either strengthen or challenge us as...
There aren’t many public theologians these days in the mold of the mid-twentieth-century’s Reinhold Niebuhr. Someone who comes very close is David Brooks, who is, in fact, today’s guest preacher at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The first video below begins with his...
