Amy Richter
The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter is an Episcopal priest who, along with her husband, Joseph Pagano, serves at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Frederick Maryland. Their most recent co-edited book is Saving Words: 20 Redemptive Words Worth Rescuing, published by Cascade.
Sermons and Bible Studies
Family Ties, Proper 18 (C) – 2022
[RCL] Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33 What does it mean to be family? What do we mean when we say we are part of a church family or God’s family? What about when the interests of our family conflict with other things that pull on us, demand our time and energy […]
Obituary for a Fool, Proper 13 (C) – 2022
[RCL] Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21 Obituaries are about the life, not the death. The death is the occasion, but it’s usually reported in just one sentence, maybe with a detail—a disease, a condition, a struggle, an accident – and an age. We appraise: so young; a long life; so sudden; […]
Hoping Skills, Proper 28 (B) – 2021
[RCL] 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8 If ever there were a Sunday for today’s opening collect, this is it. What a gospel lesson. Hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this gospel? It’s full of troubling images, images that cut too close to home, that sound too much […]
How It Works, Epiphany 3 (B) – 2021
[RCL] Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20 “Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.” That’s all we get in today’s Gospel lesson to describe how Jesus called his first disciples and how they responded. That’s […]
Unquenchable Love, Pentecost 13 (A) – August 30, 2020
[RCL]: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Psalm 124; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20 Moses’ first response to the burning bush was curiosity: “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” By the end of his life, though, did Moses instead wonder at how appropriate this manifestation of God […]
Rock Solid When Everything Feels Up in the Air, Easter 5 (A) – May 10, 2020
[RCL]: Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14 It all feels so up in the air. When have so many people, everywhere, felt so uncertain, had so many unanswered and unanswerable questions all at the same time? When have so many plans been upended, suspended? When have so many guidelines been provisional, […]
Children of the God of the Living, Proper 27 (C) – 2019
[RCL]: Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22 or Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38 People chase immortality in many ways. Some spend billions on research in search of the technology or genetics or pharmaceuticals or a whole host of things they hope will allow humans, someday, to defy death or radically extend our span […]
By Faith, Proper 14 (C) – 2019
[RCL]: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40 By faith… by faith… by faith… These words pulse through today’s epistle like a heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. (It also works in Greek, the language the letter was originally written in—a single, two-syllable word we translate “by faith.” It sounds like pist-ay). “By […]
The Hero Revealed, Tuesday in Holy Week – 2019
[RCL]: Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 71:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 12:20-36 Sometimes our eyes deceive us. We think we know what we’re looking at, but it turns out that reality is different than we thought, like our perceptions or expectations were off, there is more here than meets the eye. Sometimes, of course, we can’t see […]
The First Sign, Epiphany 2 (C) – 2019
Why start with this miracle? In John’s Gospel, the first of Jesus’ signs—what the other Gospels call “miracles”—was turning water into wine. Jesus’ first sign that inspired his disciples to believe in him was not healing a sick person, bringing someone back from the dead, forgiving sins, or exorcizing a demon. It was making gallons […]
Change Your Question – Change Your Life, Proper 24 (B) – 2018
Here they come: the Zebedee boys. In fact, you can see them coming. They’ve been shopping at Men’s Wearhouse, and they like how they look. They flash whitened smiles, they’ve got just enough grey around the temples to look experienced but not tired; enough tan to look sporty, not like they have to earn a […]
Contentment, Proper 13 (B) – 2018
How do we know what is enough? To any normal member of his kingdom, King David would have looked like a man with enough. And yet, King David was not content. He wanted things that were not his to have. He wanted Bathsheba, although she was married to someone else. He wanted the appearance of […]
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