Words From Silence: Contemplation in a World of Action

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark 2nd Sunday of Easter, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector One of the most powerful images from our Gospel for this morning comes in that opening sentence where we hear that the disciples are huddled for “fear of the Jews,” behind the locked door of the house. It’s understandable, of course, why they might be fearful. The authorities have just executed Jesus on Golgotha, and they rightly think that they might face a similar fate through their association with Jesus. No wonder Peter, warming his hands over the charcoal fire denies he knows Jesus and tries to mask his Galilean accent.             But I think there are other dimensions to the disciples being locked away behind closed doors. I think they are feeling great shame at their collective betrayal. I think they are feeling great sadness at the loss of their teacher and friend. They are lo...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Good Friday The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean and Rector In a week the Surgeon General has compared to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, with death tolls from the COVID-19 pandemic rising around the country, it’s not hard to hear and see echoes of the Passion Gospel according to John in the world around us. Things are grim. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Patients dying in isolation, separated from their loved ones who can only grieve and pray from afar. Doctors in some countries having to make impossible choices about whom to treat. Millions out of work, and the great uncertainty of ever knowing when this is all going to end. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” One of the clergy jokes about Palm Sunday is that the reason we read the Passion Gospel after the procession of the palms is because no one comes to Good Friday. It’s true that it’s sparsely attended, but I wonder whether if this ye...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Maundy Thursday, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector It is night. In the light of a guttering candle Jesus and the disciples are at table enjoying a simple meal. Suddenly, Jesus gets up, takes off his outer cloak, ties a towel around his waist, pours some water in a bowl and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Their mouths hang open in astonishment. With the dust on their feet picked up during their peregrinations with their teacher, Jesus in one fell swoop also washes away every idea they had thought about what the Messiah might look like, how Kingship looks, and who they are called to be. “Heaven stoops to earth.” Love comes down. God bows low to meet us where we are and love us into light. On Palm Sunday, we saw Jesus enact a different sort of procession from the usual pomp and circumstance of the Roman Imperial powers on the other side of town. Herod arrives on a massive war horse surr...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Palm Sunday, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Here we are on the cusp of Holy Week, on the cusp of where your true joy is to be found, at the beginning of the journey into love, of putting on the mind of Christ, of becoming a little more like the one we follow after and call, “Lord.”  That’s really what the journey of Holy Week is all about--making the life of boundless and boundary-crossing love we see revealed in the person of Jesus Christ our life. All the liturgies point us away from Holy Week being a spectatorial “observance” and towards an actual participation in the life of Christ, and the embodiment--not just with our lips, but with our life--of what it looks like to live as/from/for Love. So it makes sense that as we are about to embark on this journey into belovedness that we might be that boundary-crossing blessing and belovedness for others, that we get a clear, indelible pict...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark 5 Lent, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Sometimes the Collect for the Day says it all. As I sat down to do my lectio divina with the readings appointed for this Sunday (it usually takes me an hour or so) I found myself stopped in my tracks by the phrase, “[that] among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” “Swift and varied changes,” certainly captures these topsy turvy times, doesn’t it? The current public health crisis seems to change hour to hour, minute to minute, even moment to moment. Things that once seemed permanent and unshakeable—school, meeting together in public for worship, seeing our friends and neighbors, going to the store, going to the movies, or taking the kids to the playground—have suddenly vanished. It’s astounding how quickly everything we have taken for granted is simply gone. I was reminded of th...