Father Snort

Brad Sullivan Christmas Eve, Year C December 24, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 2:1-14(15-20) When Kristin’s and my first son, Noah, was born, we were rather excited, a little apprehensive, and not entirely clueless as to what we were supposed to do and what was coming. There I was, the proud daddy-to-be, standing by Kristin’s side in the delivery room, looking lovingly and expectantly at my wife, and as the nurse was getting Kristin’s vitals, she asks me, “are you the coach?” “Uh, I’m her husband, father of the little baby in there. Does that count?” Apparently it did because the nurse let me stay. I don’t know how successfully coachy I was, but as husband and father, I did a pretty good job, there by her side, holding her hand throughout the three-hour delivery. I’m not sure whether or not Joseph was an overly good coach when Mary gave birth eith

Brad Sullivan 4 Advent, Year C December 20, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 1:39-45 (46-55) Slings & Arrows My family and I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Friday night, and it was totally awesome, everything I’ve been waiting almost 30 years for. Tickets were sold out for weeks before the movie even opened (we had our since October), and we’re seeing it again tomorrow night (with tickets we’ve also had since October). Apparently there are some people in the world who don’t particularly care about Star Wars, but even they have heard about this near miraculous event. It’s been this enormously huge deal for years in the making, international headlines, and when it really comes down to it, this movie doesn’t really matter, not even a little bit. It’s a movie. It’s great storytelling. It’s a huge part of our culture, but it’s still just a movie. By the way, I&#

Brad Sullivan 3 Advent, Year C December 13, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Luke 3:7-18 You Were Serious About That? Last Friday at a Lions meeting, we heard a presentation from Jason Coleman who has begun a new farm here in Bay City called Moonbow Farms. In college, he got a degree in sustainable farming which seeks to combine best practices for financial, communal, and environmental sustainability. He talked about making a living at farming to provide for his family and doing so in a way that also brought the most benefit to the surrounding community and to the surrounding environment. One thing in particular he said about sustainable agriculture stuck with me. He said a person could manage his farm in a way to earn 50 or $100,000 more, but that he didn’t really need it. So instead, his model is to spend more on his workers and on his methods. He won’t make as much money as he could, so that the community around him benefi

Brad Sullivan 2 Advent, Year C December 6, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Baruch 5:1-9 Luke 3:1-6 Title It’s the second Sunday of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas. We have 19 days to go until the big event. Are any of y’all tired yet? Tired from all of the busyness going on in December, the shopping, the decorating, the parties, and burning the candle at both ends? Are y’all also tired of hearing about mass shootings and tired of living in fear? I am. I’m tired of the violence, the heartache, and of wondering if such a shooting will happen here. Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. These words we heard from Baruch this morning are words of comfort during fearful times. They remind me of the God we worship, that God has not abandoned us. God is constantly calling us to take off the garment of our sorrow and af

Brad Sullivan 1 Advent, Year C November 22, 2015 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Psalm 25:1-9 Luke 21:25-36 A World Alight With the Presence of Jesus I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was great, up in Austin with lots of family at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. As my sister-in-law, Darlene, said, “It was perfect except that Dad wasn’t there.” There were some pangs of sadness here and there, but mostly it was very joyful. Joy combined with some sadness here and there is fairly descriptive of the Advent season. Advent is the beginning of our church year, the time of preparation for Jesus’ coming. So, it is a joyful time, waiting with hopeful expectation for Jesus’ return. While Advent happens just before Christmas, we’re not really preparing for Jesus’ birth. We’re preparing for his coming again. We wait with joy for his coming again. The s

Brad Sullivan Proper 29, Year B November 22, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX John 18:33-37 Risk & Compassion: Demands of Jesus’ Kingdom Last week, Lynette, our senior warden, shared with me a video of a testimony given by Travis Tinnin. Travis just passed away a couple of days ago. Some of y’all know him. He grew up here in Bay City and had a wife and two-year-old twin boys. Travis had had complications at birth and wasn’t expected to live, but he did. Then he wasn’t expected to walk, but he did. He lived with the cancer for longer than expected, and had children he wasn’t supposed to be able to have, and in his testimony, given about 4 years ago, he talked about the trust he has in Jesus. He said: Trust is agreeing to deal with someone else’s choices, for better or worse. It’s not that I trust you to catch me. It’s that I’m willing to fall if you don’t. In the same

Brad Sullivan Proper 27, Year B November 8, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Mark 12:38-44 “Give, Give!” (yes, it’s sarcastic) “Give, give! Give, give! Give, give! Give, give, give, give!” That was a song that a comedy group in Houston called “Radio Music Theater” used to sing. They were a group of three comedians who wrote and starred in plays in which they all played multiple characters, and the “give give song” was from a collection of their shows in which three of the characters were Televangelist Jiffy Dillard and his faithful cohort of heartstring pulling, Bible thumping profiteers. They didn’t talk much about the grace of Jesus, mostly just about “wicked, wicked sin,” and the need of people to give so that with the power of Jesus, Jiffy Dillard could fight the wicked, wicked sin. Give. Give till it hurts. Give ‘cause God ne

Brad Sullivan Proper 25, Year B October 25, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Mark 10:46-52 “Wrong Kingdom,” Jesus Said. We heard in Mark’s Gospel this morning, that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem by way of Jericho. Y’all remember a rather famous story involving Jericho and a young man named Joshua who led the Israelites to glorious victory against the people of Jericho. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down. That was the beginning of Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan, the land which God had promised to Israel through Abraham. Eventually, Israel conquered all of the land of Canaan and set up their capital in Jerusalem where David reigned as king. Now, we have Jesus, the son of David, going to Jerusalem by way of Jericho. Interestingly enough, Jesus’ name in Hebrew is Joshua: Jeshua, Iesus, Jesus. So we have Jesus, who is the new Joshua and the new Davidi

Brad Sullivan Proper 24, Year B October 18, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Job 38:1-7, (34-41) Mark 10:35-45 “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’” Prior to this, Elihu, one of Job’s friends had been defending God to Job. Job and his friends all had a pretty basic understanding of the universe and the causal relationship between human sin and human tragedy. If something really bad happened to you, it was because you had done something really bad. Job questioned how it could be so, since he hadn’t sinned in some terrible way. Elihu, Job’s friend, on the other hand, defended God to the hilt, telling Job how bad he was and how righteous God was. There was no compassion with Elihu, or very little. There was no question in Elihu’s mind that he was right. He used scripture to pack his arguments, and he gave platitud

Brad Sullivan Proper 23, Year B October 11, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Hebrews 4:12-16 Mark 10:17-31 Possessed by the Demon of Our Possessions The movie Fight Club came out when I was in my early twenties, and like most guys in their early twenties at the time, I loved that movie. I still do, truth be told, and not because there were violent fight scenes. I loved the movie because of its sharp social commentary and its insightful critique of what we value and what is truly important to us. Early on in the movie, Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, says, “The things you own end up owning you.” This certainly seems to be the case for the man in our Gospel story this morning who wanted to inherit eternal life, but wasn’t willing to get rid of his things in order to do so. We might think him foolish, but then the truth of the Fight Club quote comes in. “The things you own end up owning you.”

Brad Sullivan Proper 22, Year B October 4, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16 Sinners In the Arms of A Loving God Jesus’ teaching on divorce was more than the Pharisees wanted to hear and more than Jesus’ disciples wanted to hear. The disciples were even so miffed by it that they were kinda in a bad mood afterwards, so when some kids came up they were like W.C. Fields, “Go way kid, you bother me.” All they really heard was “divorce is bad, don’t do it,” and if that’s all we take from the Gospel today, “divorce is bad, don’t do it,” then we’re missing Jesus’ teaching. It would also be easy to say, “hmmm, but we allow divorce; we allow for resurrection after the death of a marriage…I guess we’ll just put this passage out of our minds.” Neither response takes Jesus seriously. Neither

Brad Sullivan Proper 20, Year B September 20, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Mark 9:30-37 Jesus’ disciples must have been pretty darn disillusioned and disheartened by the end of today’s Gospel. Jesus had just told them for the second time that he was going to die. This was not long after they had failed to cast a demon out of a little boy. “Why could we not cast out the demon?” They asked Jesus. He replied that the demon could only come out through prayer. Perhaps the disciples were relying on themselves and their supposed power, rather than relying on God. So, they’ve got this question of power and greatness already brewing. Then, when Jesus told them that he was going to die and on the third day rise again, they still didn’t quite understand, at least not about him rising again after three days, but they did seem to understand that he would die because they seemed to be working on a succession plan.

Brad Sullivan Proper 18, Year B September 6, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 Mark 7:24-37 Jesus didn’t want to heal a little girl who was possessed by a demon simply because she wasn’t Jewish. That’s a hard point for us to accept, and this is a difficult passage to wrestle with. Many have said that Jesus was just testing the Syrophoenician woman’s faith, and that he really intended to heal the woman’s daughter all along, but that doesn’t really seem to follow the story. Jesus had traveled north of Israel to the region of Tyre. This was gentile country, and the woman is named as a gentile. There was no reason to test her faith. I think we can take Jesus’ dismissal of the woman on face value. “Let the children be fed first,” Jesus said, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” I was sent for Isra

Brad Sullivan Proper 17, Year B August 30, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Song of Solomon 2:8-13 James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” We got to hear from the Song of Solomon today, a series of poems and writings of passionate, unabashed love, the kind of love experienced between a newly married couple on their honeymoon and a long-married couple for whom that passion and unabashed love remains. Interestingly, God is nowhere mentioned in the entire book of Song of Solomon. Many in the church have tried to allegorize Song of Solomon to make it about Jesus’ love for the church, and that’s a valid interpretation, God’s passionate love for humanity. If we stop there, however, and don’t allow this book also to be about what it truly is, a writing about passionate love between people, we’d be missing out on some of the beauty of this writing and t

Brad Sullivan Proper 16, Year B August 23, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69 Why did so many of Jesus’ disciples leave him when he told them they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Perhaps some thought that was kinda gross, taking him a little too literally. Others, perhaps knew what he was talking about and didn’t want to put in the time and effort. Jesus talked about the manna from heaven which Israel ate during their 40-year journey in the desert after the exodus from Egypt, and when Jesus mentioned that, some of his listeners started to get a hint that following Jesus was not a one and done kinda deal. They didn’t get to be baptized by John, follow Jesus, and be fed every day with miraculous loaves and fishes from Jesus. That’s not the bread he was talking about when he said eat my flesh and drink my blood. It’s not like the manna; it’s not simply getting a m

Brad Sullivan Proper 15, Year B August 16, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58 “[Lord] Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.” These words are from Eucharistic Prayer C, the third option of Eucharistic Prayer in our Rite II, modern language liturgy. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, instituting the sacrament of his body and blood in remembrance of him. This was just before he went to the cross and died, a meal that we would eat for the forgiveness of our sins. In John’s Gospel, a meal is not mentioned at the end of Jesus’ life, but in the middle of his ministry. Jesus talks about eating his body and blood, the bread

For as long as I can remember, I have gone to church. I attended mass on Sundays with my parents or grandmother. CCD always took up my Wednesday evenings. CYO was weekly with activities throughout the year. There was not an option to not go. My parents never planned weekend excursions that interfered with church. My brother, sisters, and I all made our First Communion and Confirmation as scheduled. Extracurricular activities did not interfere with church. I attended a Catholic university so my religious involvement continued through my young adult years. I was privileged growing up to worship at different churches with friends – Methodist, Assembly of God, and Pentecostal to name a few. I remember the different experiences of spirit filled worship and keep those close to my heart today. I learned early on that God was not only in the Catholic Church, but wherever I was on Sunday morning. As I grew up, I always believed I was the church as well. God was with me as I closed my eyes in pr

Brad Sullivan Proper 12, Year B July 26, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21 I had a wonderful week on our mission trip last week. We were divided into groups, and my team spent our days digging post holes for fences with Habitat for Humanity through some of the rockiest soil I’ve ever seen. Hard work, but very gratifying, and the youth were great, working hard, cheerful, and loving being there. We also spent each night in worship and had time with our work crews to discuss questions that the preacher gave. Some in my group had other questions about our faith, so we got together after dinner on Thursday along with several other youth, the other adult from our group, and we had this great conversation of faith. One thing kept coming up during this conversation which I finally addressed to the group. The kids kept asking about whether this group or that group would be going to hell. I finally said, &

Brad Sullivan Proper 11, Year B July 19, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 The people in Jesus’ day flocked to him. They went running around a lake to reach him, and thronged to him in the marketplace. He called them sheep without a shepherd, and we saw last week what their shepherds were like. Herod had an innocent man killed so he would look powerful in front of his friends. The Pharisees and other religious leaders demanded perfection regarding religious practice, but they didn’t help regular people connect to God while living their normal, everyday lives. People flocked to Jesus and fought to be near him. Why are so many not flocking to Jesus now? Folks don’t seem to be getting healed of physical infirmities like they once were. Physical healing is not needed as badly as it once was, we have doctors for much of that healing. We still need healing from Jesus, however, healing fro

Brad Sullivan Proper 10, Year B July 12, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX Mark 6:14-29 Hooray for getting to talk about beheading this morning. I know it’s my personal favorite topic first thing on a Sunday morning. Earlier in the week, Kristin asked me about mock enthusiasm if I was looking forward to preaching about the beheading of John the Baptist. “Is that the Gospel for this Sunday?” I asked. “Yup, it’s great, isn’t it?” She replied. “Oy,” I think was my response. There is grace in this story, however. We just have to find it. So here we go. Herod was basically a puppet king. Rome was the true ruler over Israel, even though Israel had some amount of self-rule beneath the umbrella of Rome. Herod was king of Israel, but only because Rome didn’t want to devote the resources to rule them directly. I can imagine Herod feeling rather powerless as this puppet king. He felt pow