“How much should I give to the Church?” This is the dilemma faced by most Episcopalians each year around this time as they consider their pledge and annual giving to the work of the church. As a Sunday bulletin insert from the Ecumenical Stewardship Center explains the issue, “People are often asked to give the…

Sometimes we are so familiar with something that we don’t even notice it anymore. The little bit from the second chapter of Genesis that we just heard, and that we just heard Jesus quote, is like that. It’s so familiar it’s invisible. But it is dreadfully important and says some absolutely basic things about our…

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” says Adam in today’s reading from Genesis. He immediately recognizes his deep connection to the new human being standing before him, a connection that God has woven deeply into the fabric of their lives. For us in the West today, it’s very…

Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. I promise…until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. How many of us have repeated these words? They seemed so true, so beautiful, so eternal, so right, didn’t they, when we first said them? Yet for some of us, they have become…

This Sunday’s gospel has words that are likely to make us cringe. It is hard to hear them as good news! It sounds, on the face of it, that Jesus is ruling out divorce. And so many of us are divorced, or our friends and family members are. Where does that leave us? First we…