Words From Silence: Contemplation in a World of Action

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark 2 nd Sunday after Epiphany, Year C The Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Priest-in-Charge One of the things you might have noticed the past two weeks about the Epiphany blessing is that combines what seem to be three separate events—the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, and the episode from today’s Gospel at the Wedding Feast of Cana. Somehow, in the theological imagination of the Church each of these events reveals to us, manifests a different aspect of the coming of Jesus into the world. One of the things that binds these three seemingly disparate events together is that they all remind us of the Christian life as a journey—a journey into love and belovedness. The Magi, of course, are those seekers who yearn for a life of depth, significance and dignity. They are tired of skating across the surface of their lives and know in their heart of hearts that there is something more to life. They are the ...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St Mark Baptism of the Lord, Year C The Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Priest-in-Charge When I was in seminary, I served for three years as sacristan for the chapel. Basically, we were church rats in charge getting everything ready for each of the three services held each day—morning prayer, noon eucharist, and evening prayer. We’d set out the vestments, arrange the vessels on the credence table, make sure the bible was marked, the wicks of the candles trimmed. One day, I was puttering about the sacristy getting things set up when I noticed that we were out of Holy Water. We had this enormous glass pickle jar that we used to fill the font and it had run dry. I filled it back up and placed it on the counter for the celebrant of the noon Eucharist to bless when they arrived. Virginia Theological Seminary is an interesting place—you’ve got people who think that if you don’t sing the Eucharist it’s not a valid mass, and others who would ob...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Epiphany, Year C The Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Priest-in-Charge The Feast of the Epiphany represents, with the Baptism of Our Lord next Sunday, the climax of the season of Advent and Christmas, that time in which the world goes dark that we might focus ourselves, and pattern our lives after the One who is the Light of the World, the One in whom our peace, joy and happiness resides—Jesus Christ. In the season of Advent, the call is to let fall away all that is inessential, all that hinders the recognition of our essential goodness, our belovedness, our identity as unexpected insiders in the very life of God, sons and daughters of the Most High. All the various ways in which we’ve tried, through our social, cultural, educational, and even religious conditioning to seek for God through the power, possessions, and prestige are revealed, in the blazing glory of the Light of Christ to be poor substitutes for the gift of God’s v...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark. Christmas Day Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-14 The Reverend Tyler Doherty, Priest-in-Charge This Christmas morning, we don’t hear about the Shepherds, or the Magi, or the “No Vacancy” sign, or the visitation, or the Magnificat, or any of the things we’ve come to associate with Christmas. Instead, we are taken back, way back—before there even was a Bethlehem, and before there was even time itself. These opening lines of John’s Gospel are really a kind of recapitulation of the creation story; Genesis redux with the Christ as the logos , the Word, the ordering principle, providing the shape, the pattern, and the arc of how things hang together—“All things came into being through him.” Coffee beans, cornfields, Czechoslovakia—all things, John reminds us, mediate God’s presence to us. That we see Jesus in the manger—swaddled in cloth, packed in mud and straw, the tiny infant’s cry piercing the dumbstruck s...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Christmas Eve —in Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20 The Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Priest-in-Charge Christmassing—The Pilgrimage to the Manger of the Heart When we come to ponder in our hearts like Mary the Mystery of the Incarnation, we often get tricked into thinking that Christmas was something that happened a couple of thousand years ago. Of course, the human person of Jesus was born in a dusty little corner of Palestine to a marginalized and voiceless teenage girl whose pregnancy brought with it all the scorn and derision that unwed mothers still face today. But, if we think of the Incarnation as merely an historical event, something that happened long ago in a distant land, we miss the full import of its meaning. Christmas becomes the marking of an anniversary, or a celebration of “ Jesus ’ Birthday” that rolls around each year. We get lulled into thinking that all this—the hymns, the liturgy, t...