St. James' Episcopal Church – Mt. Airy, Maryland
Sermons by Rev. Dr. Bill Doggett (Page 3)
The fortieth chapter of the book of Isaiah begins what is often called “Second Isaiah.” We call it that because the book of Isaiah seems to have been written in three parts, by at least three different people, at three different times in the history of the Jewish people. The three sections are marked by changes in message, changes in vocabulary, and…
The reading from First Corinthians is kind of disturbing, isn’t it? Paul seems convinced that the last judgment is coming soon, and he directs the followers of Jesus to live as if the only thing that matters is the present moment, and everything that is concerned with the future – weddings, funerals, hopefulness, and even grocery shopping, should be set aside to…
Today both our first lesson and our Gospel lesson are stories about being called – Samuel is called by God to prophesy to Eli, and Nathanael is called, first by Phillip and then by Jesus into discipleship. And calling may well be on many of our minds these days. This church is in the middle of a search for a new Rector,…
You know, if you were a member of the Orthodox Church, the twelve days of Christmas would have only just begun, and the feast of the Epiphany, which we celebrated on Tuesday, wouldn’t be here until January nineteenth. I only mention this because in the Orthodox churches, the gospel lesson you would hear read on Epiphany is not the story of the…
You have to feel a little sorry for poor Joseph. Nothing seems to be working out for him the way he planned. The woman he’d been betrothed to for a long time, perhaps since before either of them were even born, in the way things happened back then, is pregnant. Joseph knew he’s not the dad, and Joseph knew that his life…
This is the first Sunday of the Christmas Season – the fourth day of Christmas if you’re counting, and hoping your true love will send you those four calling birds. But our Gospel reading actually speaks of that second-day-of-Christmas gift – the two turtledoves, which is the sacrifice that poor Jewish people, when they couldn’t…
Merry Christmas! Whether you are one of those people who has used your Advent season of preparation wisely, and all is calm and all is bright at your house: everything wrapped, mailed, decked and baked; or whether like me you will leave this place to a few more hours of batteries, gift wrap, allen wrenches…
“Nothing will be impossible with God.” It’s a simple, startling pronouncement from the angel Gabriel, one that, perhaps, we still have a hard time believing. And the difficulty lies not in those kind of existential conundrums that high school philosophers are so fond of, like: “Can God create a stone so heavy God can’t lift it?” No, the difficulty here is much…
In case you were wondering, we didn’t run out of blue candles. Our Advent candle is pink today for a reason. It is the third Sunday of Advent, sometimes called ‘Rose Sunday,” but traditionally known as “Gaudete Sunday,” ‘gaudete being a Latin word that means ‘rejoice,’ because the proper introit for the day begins with that word. Our ancestors, in their wisdom,…