“It is best for you now to complete what a year ago you began not only to do but to desire, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.” II Corinthians 8:10

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

            As many of you know, things in my life have been pretty crazy over the past few weeks, as I prepare to finish my work here at Saint Paul’s and as our family prepares to move.  There has been one advantage in all the extra tasks though: this year, I got out of cleaning the pond.  In our family, you see, we have this chore that comes around every June, just when the days are beginning to get really hot.  For two days, we sweep and push several hundred thousand gallons of dirty, smelly water through a six inch pipe to drain the enormous pond behind my grandparent’s farmhouse.  Continued

“He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” St. Mark 4:40

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This morning’s Gospel lesson is not one into which I can easily imagine myself.  I’ve always been a landlubber, the world of boats and sails and sea storms a foreign and strange world.  I get stern and bow and starboard and larboard confused, and I never got that merit badge for knot-tying in the scouts.  I like to fish, but nearly all of my fishing has been from a pond bank or while wading out into a stream. Continued

St. Paul’s Church, Sharpsburg, MD, is a traditional, high-church congregation of 259 members, of whom 85 are active communicants (see full profile here).  We seek to call a part-time Rector who will work on average 20 hours per week, including Sunday activities.  St. Paul’s requires a leader as church pastor, priest and teacher, who will help us to work together to share the Gospel in our community.   Continued

I knew that the news wouldn’t stay under wraps for very long when I saw Charlie at the Post Office the day after a made the announcement to the congregation.  “When will you be leaving town,” he asked, “we’ll be sorry to see you go.”  It didn’t take me long to learn that most news in Sharpsburg passes in and out of the post office.  It’s our most central meeting place, the one location where you are most likely to see the folks you know.  We have enough options to allow people to differ about the best place to buy their morning coffee or to sit down for dinner, but there’s only one place to pick up your mail if you live in town.  Rome had its forum, Washington has the Mall and Boston its Common-here in Sharpsburg, we have the Post Office.    Continued

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  Romans 8:15-16

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

An article in the Wall Street Journal this week remarked on the large number of new federal agencies and programs being created as a part of the economic stimulus plan, all of them designated by fancy acronyms.  Not since Roosevelt’s New Deal, it remarked, have we seen so many new alphabet soup titles.  Continued

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”  St. John 16:13 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

For about a month in the fall of my sophomore year of high school, I was a dirt bag.  That’s what we called ourselves, the “dirt bags,” the official land judging team of the Clear Spring chapter of the Future Farmers of America.  After school we would get into our blue FFA coveralls and plunge into the soil pits in the fields behind the high school to judge dirt.  We were getting ready for the state contest where, if you won, you got a free trip to judge dirt at the national contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Continued