Listen to Jesus Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday Mar. 2, 2014 The Rev. Dr. George H. Martin Good Morning! And welcome to St. Matthew’s on one of those Sundays when we think about the future of the Church. Our focus begins with the young men and young women and what we call the Celebration of Manhood and Womanhood. This is, for them, what we’d call a rite of Passage. We recognized today that each of us is called to leave childhood…
Becoming a Truthful People Sermon for February 16, 2014 The Rev. Dr. George Martin My friend Clark Morphew worked for the Pioneer Press newspaper in St. Paul Minnesota. He was their religion editor. He’d been a Lutheran pastor but he had a somewhat irreverent attitude to Christians who were either too serious about too much, or Christians who were extremely pious but who failed to consider the needs of the poor and those who were suffering. We often met for…
Sermon for Evensong at St. Matthew’s—Feb. 9, 2014 The Rev. Dr. George H. Martin Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! How is that line from Isaiah’s prophecy to be read? That way? A bland unemotional reading. Or is it a command, maybe even echoing the instrument invoked. SHOUT OUT, DO NOT HOLD BACK! LIFT UP YOUR VOICE LIKE A TRUMPET! Like a TRUM…MMMM..mmmmm…PET There’s such intensity and focus in Isaiah’s prophecy. I almost…
Pitched Tent Among Us A Sermon for Dec. 29, 2013—The First Sunday After Christmas The Rev. Dr. George Martin During Advent I prepared for Christmas by focusing on the poem by W. H. Auden’s called For the Time Being. It seems fitting to me to let you hear part of the conclusion to Auden’s telling of the Christmas story. He wrote: Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes…
Christmas Eve—Dec. 24, 2013—St. Matthew’s Parish, Pacific Palisades, CA About that Manger The Rev. Dr. George Martin In telling the Christmas Story, Charles Dickens has Ebeneezer Scrooge encounter the Ghost of Christmas Past. In that part of the narrative Scrooge reaches back into childhood memories. The memories he is shown reveal a history of his detachment from the real meaning of Christmas—a pattern set in place early in life, of other’s enjoying the Spirit of Christmas, while he was absorbed…