Words From Silence: Contemplation in a World of Action

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Easter 7, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Today’s readings contain echoes of the Feast of the Ascension celebrated on Thursday. In our reading from Acts, we have that picture of Jesus ascending to the right hand of the Father and the women and the disciples gathering together in prayer waiting to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. The bodily presence of Jesus departs (“And now I am no longer in the world”) so that God might dwell in the hearts of the disciples as the boundless energy of other-centered love. Some folks have objected that the Ascension, taken literally, is simply too odd to believe. It speaks of an out-moded “three-storey universe” that is no longer believable and therefore we should just drop the whole thing and maybe spend the seventh Sunday of Easter snuggled into the Church of the Holy Comforter with a nice cup of joe and Jane Pauley on the tube. Not so fast, I say. The As

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Easter 6, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean and Rector The Greek Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware is fond of reminding us that more than anything else, human beings are worshipping animals-- Homo adorans . More than tool makers, more than thinkers, what makes us truly human, what feeds us on the journey of becoming truly human human beings, is worship. And the interesting thing is that as worshipping animals, human beings always worship someone or something. We don’t have a choice about worshipping, but we do have a choice about what to worship, about whom to worship. And what we worship matters, because the powerful thing about worship is that over time we come to resemble more and more that which we worship.             When the boundary-crossing love of Jesus is at the center of our lives, when we dispose ourselves to God in Christ through the Holy Spirit (“Into your hands I commend my Spirit” “Let it be w

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Easter 5, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Our passage from the Book of Acts for today centers on the martyrdom of Stephen, hailed by the tradition as the first Christian martyr. The parallels to Jesus’ own death on the cross are, of course, unmistakable. In Luke, Jesus on the way to cross meets violence not with violence but with forgiveness—“Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do.” Mocked on the cross by one of the thieves, he ministers to the other even in the midst of incredible torment—“Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.” And when the moment of his death comes, Jesus cries out with a loud voice and says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Stephen’s death at the hands of the angry mob displays many of the same leitmotifs. The angry crowd licking its chops and rolling up their sleeves eager to lay into their scapegoated victim. The prayer of surrend

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark. Easter 4, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty In both the Book of Acts and the First Letter of Peter , we get a glimpse into the lives of the earliest Christians and what it might mean to be an Easter people, a people whose lives embody the self-forgetful love and forgiveness revealed to us in the person and work of the Risen Christ. Eastertide--the great fifty days between Easter and Pentecost--is really a time to deepen and renew our commitment to follow after Jesus down the way of love, to become, in the short span of days we have allotted here on earth, a little bit more like the one we call Lord.              I love those lines from the First Letter of Peter , “For this you have been called… that you should follow in his steps.” It’s a powerful reminder of the basic disposition of Christian discipleship--that we are to follow in Jesus’s footsteps, to touch with his hands, to see with his love-opened eyes,