Father Snort

Brad Sullivan 3rd Easter, Year C April 10, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 21:1-19 “Have Some Kryptonite” – Sayings of Superman in Jesus’ Kingdom As we know, Jesus’ disciples and hoards of his followers were wanting Jesus to be a big gallant conqueror who would kick out Rome and end up basically ruling over all the other nations, so that Israel would not only remove Rome from power, but would also take Rome’s place as the world power, the empire over all nations. Jesus told his disciples and hoards of followers that he was not going to bring about some huge military campaign to establish his kingdom, at least he said this implicitly. He taught about not fighting against the governing authorities, turning the other cheek when someone hits you; he said, “My kingdom not from here, if were, I’d have angels coming, to my rescue, but as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Then he

Brad Sullivan 2nd Easter, Year C April 3, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 20:19-31 Obeying God: The Laws of Love and Grace “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” That was Peter’s response to the high priest of Israel telling them to stop preaching and teaching about Jesus. Peter’s response claimed that the high priest had no real authority, certainly no authority given by God, but that the high priest was simply part of a human institution, a rather bold claim from a fisherman whose Rabbi had been condemned as a heretic by Israel crucified by Rome. Then again, Jesus did tend to bring out some audaciousness in people. I suppose being resurrected tends to do that. When Jesus first met with his disciples, they had locked the door to the room they were in because they were afraid of most of Israel which had not come to follow Jesus. Their plan was to duck and cover, hide until the heat

Brad Sullivan Easter Sunday, Year C March 27, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 20:1-18 The New Garden Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. As she was weeping outside Jesus empty tomb, wondering who had stolen Jesus’ body, she turned, and Jesus was there, having been raised from the dead, and she thought he was the gardener, and so he was. Jesus was the one who made the very first garden in Eden, and so standing in this new garden of Jesus’ resurrection, Mary is the first one to see and experience the resurrection life. Jesus calls Mary by name, and then she knows him, and she clings to him, her heart full of love and joy at seeing Jesus before her, standing with her in the rebirth of creation. Then, Jesus tells her to go to his disciples and tell them that he has been raised, “do not cling to me,” Jesus says, and as much as Mary wants to stay, to hold on to Jesus forever, she trusts him. She lets g

Brad Sullivan Easter Vigil, Year C March 26, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Romans 6:3-11 Luke 24:1-12 Baptized Into Jesus’ Death Alleluia, Christ is risen! Gosh that feels good to say. We get to revel in the glory of Jesus’ resurrection again. I know we still have been throughout Lent, but our focus was more on our shortcomings and failings and the reasons for Jesus suffering and death. Now, our focus is more squarely on Jesus and his resurrection, the effects of his suffering and death. Those effects are life, restoration, and reconciliation for all. Why did Jesus have to die? We get questions like these from kids, from adults, from Christians and from non-Christians. We often say, “to pay for our sins,” and that is true, but it also leads to questions about why, if God is so forgiving, did God not just forgive us outright? Why take the penalty on himself? There are a variety of answers po

Brad Sullivan Good Friday, Year C March 25, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 18:1-19:42 Braving the Tranquil Sea of Silence Silence. That what is called for often in our liturgy, silence. Silence can be the sound of prayer, the sound of relaxing and taking a break for a while. After a long day and once the kids are to bed and before binge watching Netflix or reading starts, it can be very healing to sit in silence for a few minutes. Silence gives our brains time to unwind. Silence allows us to notice our breathing and to marvel at the miracle of our lives, our bodies, the presence of God around us and within us. Silence can be the sound and the sounds of life without the noise of everything else. Silence can be a beautiful thing. Silence can also bring to the surface things we’d rather keep buried. Silence brings a void, and inevitably something will come to fill that void, often the memories we’d rather tha

Brad Sullivan Holy Monday, Year C March 21, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 12:1-11 This Won’t Do (things we need to let die) In the sardonic, silly, and hilarious series of books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, wrote a science fiction tale beginning on Earth which was quickly demolished to make way for an interstellar highway. The one survivor from earth is then taken on a journey across time and space to the far reaches of the universes, and much hilarity ensues. On one of the fictional planets Douglas Adams describes, the people were peaceful and loving, until the fateful day in which a spaceship from another world crash landed onto their planet. Until this moment, they had no idea there were any other planets or stars for that matter. Their atmosphere was surrounded by a cloud of dust which blocked from view any other stars or celestial bodies. The spaceship punched a hole in their dust cloud, a

Brad Sullivan Palm Sunday, Year C March 20, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 19:28-40 Luke 22:14-23:56 The Hope of the Gospel Is in the Pit of Despair Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem has got to be the most disappointing political campaign rally in history. Today, we got to hear the good part about him riding in on a donkey and the people putting palm branches down for him and shouting, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” The people all had their “Jesus for President 033” signs. The place was littered with “Make Israel Great Again” posters, and the crowd was in a frenzy, waiting to hear what Jesus would say on this last stop on his campaign before taking over Jerusalem and then marching on Rome and kicking those guys out. It seemed to be glory upon glory as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and yet the people’s hopes were disappointed. What we didn’

Brad Sullivan 5 Lent, Year C March 13, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 No Price Tag on a Community of Grace As Mary was anointing Jesus with costly perfume, Judas was complaining that she was wasting the perfume, that instead it should have been sold, and the money given to the poor. Ok, he’s got a fair point, one which would have been better taken if he hadn’t been lying and stealing money from the common purse. The perfume cost 300 denarii, that’s almost a year’s worth of wages. In modern terms, let’s call it $50,000 worth of perfume that Mary poured onto Jesus’ feet. That certainly does seem extravagant. $50,000 could have gone a long way to helping out those in need. In the three other Gospels, Jesus even teaches to do just that. In Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 18, there was a young man who asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life, and

Brad Sullivan 4 Lent, Year C March 6, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 The Parable of the Extravagantly Forgiving Father Everyone needs forgiveness. We need to give forgiveness, we need to receive forgiveness. We need the grace and healing that comes with forgiveness. That’s because we all have scars and wounds inflicted upon us over the course of our lives, and we are also all the cause of other peoples’ scars and wounds. As much as we need food, water, and air, we are starving and suffocating without forgiveness. Without forgiveness, our past wounds keep on hurting us over and over, and they keep us from living the life of God’s kingdom. Everyone needs forgiveness. That’s why God gives forgiveness so extravagantly. We call the parable which we heard today, “The Prodigal Son,” or the wasteful son. He spent his inheritance wastefully and e

Brad Sullivan 3 Lent, Year C February 28, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 13:1-9 Changing the Narrative - Did you hear about those poor Galileans whom Pilate killed? - Oh that was awful. Pilate is a monster isn’t he. - I hear he mixed their blood in with their sacrifices. - What? That’s sacrilege! - How would that even work? - I don’t know. They must have been awful people though. - That’s true, for God to have something like that happen to them. Oh hey Jesus, did you hear about those awful Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices? We don’t know exactly what the conversation was, but Jesus responded by asking them if they thought the Galileans whom Pilate killed were worse sinners than anyone else. By Jesus’ response and by what we know about how people tend to talk about things, we can guess that Jesus was spot on, and the conversatio

Brad Sullivan 2 Lent, Year C February 21, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 13:31-35 We’ll Live It Best We Can Anyway I think we could classify today’s reading as an epic faith by the Pharisees, and a pretty darn good win by Jesus. The Pharisees were trying to get rid of Jesus, trying to make it look like they were on his side. “Herod’s trying to kill you, Jesus, you’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got your best interests at heart, and we need you to go so you don’t die.” Of course they were lying. We know from Chapter Nine, that Herod was not trying to kill Jesus. He was actually pretty interested in who Jesus was. People were saying he was John the Baptist, and Herod was thinking, “I’m pretty darn sure I had John the Baptist beheaded not too long ago,” and he was curious about who Jesus was. Herod wasn’t a good guy, but he wasn’

Brad Sullivan 1 Lent, Year C February 17, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 4:1-13 Endure, Master Wayne In The Dark Night, the second in the most recent trilogy of Batman movies, Bruce Wayne was considering giving up being Batman. The Joker had the city of Gotham pretty well under siege, and he promised to stop if Batman would simply give up fighting and turn himself in to the authorities. As he was wondering what he should do, he had a conversation with Alfred who had raised him since he was a little boy. He said: Bruce Wayne: People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do? Alfred Pennyworth: Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice. I have a feeling that fatherly, sage advice was similar to what God the Father might have been whispering to Jesus when he was in the w

Brad Sullivan Ash Wednesday, Year C February 10, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Feasting On Reconciliation 19th century Anglican priest and famous preacher, Phillips Brooks, gave a sermon entitled, Nature and Circumstance, in which he preached about Jesus’ teachings on greatness and the two worlds in which we find ourselves: the world of men, and the world of the kingdom of God. In this sermon, he wrote about Nicodemus questioning Jesus’ teaching that men must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. Father Brooks said: “Nicodemus wanted Christ to meet him in a lower world, a world of moral precepts and Hebrew traditions, where the Pharisee was thoroughly at home. But Christ said, ‘No, there is a higher world; you must go up there; you must enter into that; you must have a new birth and live in a new life,-in a life where God is loved and known and trusted and communed with.”&#

Brad Sullivan 5 Epiphany, Year C February 7, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a] Leaving the Locker Room I was at a men’s retreat this weekend with the men of St. Mark’s in Richmond. Kristin is their go to supply clergy when their rector is away, and she supplied for him last summer when he was on sabbatical. So, the congregation knows and loves her and our kids, and the rector, Bert, thought it would be nice if they got to know me to, so I was invited on the retreat. They actually call is a “gathering of men” because “retreat” is just not something men do. So we gathered for great food, fellowship, games, various beverages, Bible study, skeet shooting, fishing, Eucharist, etc., and I contacted the men on our vestry yesterday afternoon and said, “this thing has been great; we have to do one here.” So on Friday night, one of the men who leads a weekly Sunda

Brad Sullivan 4 Epiphany, Year C January 31, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 4:21-30 Giving God Away So, the people of Nazareth weren’t all that taken with Jesus, were they? In Matthew and Mark’s gospels they were scandalized by Jesus as soon as he started preaching to them. He was from Nazareth and they didn’t think the hometown kid could really make it so good; who was he, preaching to them? In Luke’s gospel, however, we get a very different picture of what happened. The people of Nazareth were awed and amazed at what Jesus had taught them, and by the works he had performed in Capernaum. They note that Jesus was Joseph’s son, and they seem to be especially proud that a hometown boy was there, proclaiming fulfillment of Isaiah’s words of God’s grace. “This is fantastic!” They thought. “We’ve always been a kind of nothing little town, and now we’ve

Brad Sullivan 2 Epiphany, Year C January 17, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 4:14-21 The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Us “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That was the teaching from the hometown Nazareth carpenters’ kid. Not someday. Not keep waiting on God to deliver you, but now, today, Jesus claimed, is the year of the Lord’s favor. The spirit of God was upon him, anointing him to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, an end to oppression, and the year of the Lord’s favor. “The year of the Lord’s favor” was possibly a reference to the year of Jubilee which God commanded in Leviticus 25. Every fiftieth year was the Jubilee year, a year of rest for the land when the people didn’t work the land. God promised to bless the land so that it would provide in abundance, and the people ate whate

Brad Sullivan 2 Epiphany, Year C January 17, 2016 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 2:1-11 Everyday Jesus vs. Apocalypse Jesus So when Jesus and his mother, Mary, were at a wedding, and the wine ran out, Mary told Jesus, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." It seems that Jesus thought his mother was telling him they needed wine for the Last Supper. “My hour has not yet come,” Jesus said. “It’s not time for that important meal yet, mom, I don’t need any extra wine.” Then, I’m assuming one look from Mary told Jesus, “Son, I know we’re not there yet, but in the mean time, there is a whole lot of living to do. Give these people some wine…and don’t ever refer to me as ‘woman’ again.” “Oh, you mean wine for the party?” Jesus realized. “

Brad Sullivan 1 Epiphany, Year C January 10, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 The Heathen Preaching to the Church When Jesus came to be baptized by John, people had been coming in droves to be baptized by him. It was like a lengthy mass baptism as people came who were seeking God’s kingdom, seeking a new life and a new way of life in God’s kingdom, rather than the ways of the kingdoms of the earth. This was far more than a liturgical new years’ resolution, far more than individuals wanting to be better. They were seeking a whole new life, a whole new way of life. They were sloughing off the old ways of the old age and the kingdoms of the earth, and preparing for the new age of God’s kingdom. For us, we largely have individuals or a few people getting baptized at any one time, and over the centuries, people have begun to see baptism as being about personal salvation: individuals c

Brad Sullivan 2 Christmas, Year C January 3, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 Mary and Joseph took Jesus from Bethlehem and fled to Egypt, fleeing for Jesus’ life, threatened by the murderous king Herod. This was not the first time someone from Israel fled to Egypt under the threat of death. Back before Israel was a mighty nation, there is Israel the man, whose favorite son, Joseph was about to be killed by his brothers because they were jealous of him. At the last minute, one of the brothers, Judah, decided to sell him into slavery rather than kill him, so Joseph was taken by to Egypt by some passing traders. Going to Egypt, his life was spared. Years later, Joseph had become the Pharaoh’s second hand in Egypt by predicting a drought and having them store grain to prepare. When the drought hit, Joseph’s brothers and his father, Israel, were starving, and so they fled to Egypt to escape death.

Brad Sullivan Christmas Eve, Year C December 27, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 1:1-18 When Jesus was born, it was likely a tough year. Herod was king over Israel. While he had not yet committed the mass murder of infants and toddlers, such a heart still dwelled within that man who was king. It couldn’t have been great with him as monarch. Rome still ruled over Israel with their taxes and contempt for the people of Israel. Darkness was everywhere, and into that darkness came the light of Jesus. With all of the bad, we still hear the story of a single baby being born. We’re told that on the night of Jesus’ birth, Mary pondered what was meant that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord. John, in his Gospel, seeks to answer those questions. Jesus brought life into being and that life is the light of all people. As Jesus came among us, the true light was coming into the world, full of grace and truth. The light of Jes