Sermons

"The Crucified God"

Good Friday.A.20
The Rev. Melanie McCarley

The British novelist and playwright, William Golding once wrote: “The crucifixion should never be depicted. It is a horror to be veiled.” This would come as surprising news to Christians of the Middle Ages who went to great pains to depict the agony of the crucifixion of our Lord, employing copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears to convey the extent of our Savior’s suffering. Crucifixes—they’re painful and difficult to behold. It’s a darn sight easier to turn our head from them than to gaze upon a suffering Savior.

"Finding the Face of Christ"

Maundy Thursday.A.20
The Rev. Melanie McCarley

The Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev writes: “I saw myself, in a dream, a youth, almost a boy, in a low-pitched wooden church. The slim wax candles gleamed, spots of red, before the old pictures of the saints. A ring of colored light encircled each tiny flame. Dark and dim it was in the church …. But there stood before me many people. All fair-haired, peasant heads. From time to time they began swaying, falling, rising again, like the ripe ears of wheat, when the wind of summer passes in slow undulation over them.

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