Entirely justified article by the Midwest Conservative Journal. We'd add, that snoozing during TEC sermons is warranted, authorized, healthy and required. I've heard some God-aweful, literally, some God-aweful sermons from Episcopal clerics. Aweful! The old hymns and echoes from the old Prayer Book, including the Creeds, still offer light, redemption and salvation...but those sermons? Just some aweful sermons as TMCJ notes.
http://themcj.com/?p=39347
ZZZZZ…
Thursday, March 21st, 2013 | Uncategorized
Experts agree that the worst preaching in Christendom occurs in the Episcopal Organization. The rector could get off a good one every now and then. But one of the other ministers there got into the habit of making his point a paragraph or two in and then repeating it over and over to the point where I regularly thought (and occasionally thought about screaming), “THAT’S BEEN ESTABLISHED!!”The associate rector (the wife of the rector) didn’t really have a particular method but just went into the pulpit and started emoting all over everything. In her 2013 Easter message, Katharine Jefferts Schori demonstrates a third method. String together a few “spiritual” sentences and hope you get something meaningful and not something that reads like the Federal Register:
Rejoice, rejoice and sing, rejoice and be glad… for earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God!
As the Lenten season ends in Easter rejoicing, note what has been wrought in you this year. A remarkable cross-section of America has been practicing Lenten disciplines, even some who are not active Christians. There is a deep hunger in our collective psyche to re-orient our lives toward life and light, healing and peace. We share a holy hunger for clarity about what is good and life-giving, and we yearn to re-focus on what is most central and important in life.
Easter celebrates the victory of light and life over darkness and death. God re-creates and redeems all life from dead, dry, and destroyed bones. We are released from the bonds of self-obsession, addiction, and whatever would steal away the radical freedom of God-with-us. Our lives re-center in what is most holy and creative, the new thing God is continually doing in our midst. Practicing vulnerability toward the need and hunger of others around us, we have cultivated compassionate hearts. We join in baptismal rebirth in the midst of Jesus’ own passing-over.
Better luck next year, Kate.
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