Years ago my late brother, Mike told me about an encounter he had with his good friend, Phil Smith, who was our local pharmacist in town. He dropped by to see Phil at the drugstore one morning as he often did, and he said Phil seemed to be out
of sorts. Mike said “Phil, what’s wrong? you seem depressed.”

The one thing that all three of our lessons have in common is that the people in the lessons who encounter God would not be chosen for their roles by Central casting in Hollywood because frankly they’re all pretty undesirable.

Like many economically challenged folks in the South, after World War II, my parents wanted to escape working on farms and they were part of a great migration to upper midwestern states like Michigan and Indiana to find high paying jobs in factories.

Last Thursday marked the fortieth day after Easter, Ascension day; the day in the life of the Church that we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus to heaven.

St. Paul’s Areopagus sermon is the most dramatic and most fully reported speech in the saint’s missionary career. In today’s reading in Acts, Paul – the cosmopolitan, Hellenized, Roman citizen – [These are Paul’s credentials, and they are extremely important to the audience he is addressing] -- stands before the Areopagus to present his case for the worship of the one true Creator God and His only son, Jesus Christ.

Good morning! I am so grateful to have been asked to speak on behalf of the All Saints graduates today. I know we have worked hard to accomplish our many different goals and are poised to sail as swiftly as arrows into the world in many different directions.

Last weekend I led a vestry retreat with the other All Saints Church in my life, All Saints, Bentonville. Years ago I was involved with helping them get started as a mission. I began the retreat by putting forth this question , “Looking at your entire experience at All Saints Church, remember a time when you felt most alive, most fulfilled, or most excited about your involvement in the church.?”

When it comes time for supper, scripture says that Jesus takes bread, blesses the bread, breaks it, and then gives it to them. Jesus did the same four acts that he did when he fed the four thousand, took the food, blessed it, broke it, and shared it. It was also the four acts that he did at the last supper, and it is the four acts we carry out every time we gather for communion.

The lessons for this second Sunday in Easter share a theological theme about the evidence of Christ’s resurrection. If we go back closer to the beginning, just after the death and resurrection of Jesus, we find this troubling and depressing scene from today's
Gospel. This scene in the Gospel with the remnant of the disciples gathered under the cloak of darkness behind locked doors is simply scary. Scared and understandably paranoid, obsessively worrying that they are the next ones in line to be tortured or even crucified.