Sermon: B 25 Pentecost 28 Proper 18 November 2012

1 Sm1:4-20; Cnt. Sg Hh; Heb10:11-13[14-18]19-25; MK13:1-8

Grant us so to so hear, read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest all holy Scriptures that we may ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life.

This favorite and most effective of all collects was written for Reformation Sunday celebrating, encouraging, and urging the reading and studying all holy Scriptures, especially in English. However, today’s Markan last two sentences: “For nation will rise against nations, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” are not ones we’d like to do any of those five kinds of analytic work on. Our choice would be to omit them totally, brushing them off as hyperbole, exotic extremism, or just silliness.

Sermon: B 24 Pentecost 27 Proper 11 November 2012

Ruth 3: 1-5, 4: 13-17; Ps 127; Heb 9: 24-28; MARK 12: 38-44

On this Remembrance Day, For those who were killed in battle,

For those who gave up their lives to save others

For those who fought because they were forced to,

For those who died standing up for a just cause

For those who said war was wrong,

For those who tried to make the peace

For those who prayed when others had no time to pray

For those creatures who needlessly die

For those trees that needlessly are slaughtered

For all of mankind Let us quietly pray:

May [your] God hold them in peace/ May Love flow over the Earth and cleanse us all/ This day and for always. AMEN.

This is Marianne Griffin’s poem for Remembrance Day. I’ve been in England around this time several times recently, and in buying and wearing a poppy, I’ve mused about Remembrance, Armistice, or Veterans’ Day, our anti-war climate, and our virtual ignoring the 11th, whatever it’s called. This year, its observance gives many people a welcome recovery from politics, however we as individuals, a state, or nation, felt about the results. In having tomorrow off, not as a day off for voting, but to observe this occasion we’d rather omit, we also see the darkening chilling of our days. We also hear about the widow’s mite, her giving two coins, all she had, and know too stewardship is in the wind.