The Houghton Missioner

Trinity Episcopal Church (Advent I – Year A) Sunday, December 1 st   AD 2019 “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.”   (Romans 13:11)   I remember my mom waking me up in the dead of night on one late-December Evening when I was about four years old. “Shane.” She whispered, as if she were afraid she might be overheard. “I heard a clatter on the roof.” Clatter, I had recently learned from a Christmas movie featuring Tim Allen, was a word that meant big noise. And suddenly, there arose such a clatter. I suddenly became wide-awake with anticipation, and my mom said that she thought she heard someone on the roof of the house. So we crawled over to my bedroom window to see if we could see anything outside. Now our house was shaped a bit like the letter “L.” The bedroom where I was sleeping was on one end of the L with a window facing inward (so one could see the other end of the house where my mom and dad’s ...

Trinity Episcopal Church Sunday, November 10 th AD 2019   In today’s second Reading, we hear the following from our elder brother, Paul:   “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter…        to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”   What he is essentially saying to the Church in Thessalonica is that they really need to calm down. The Second Coming of Christ   (when he shall again appear with all the Glory of God about him) has not yet occurred. The world we experience is not the fullness of God's Kingdom.   Those who have died are not doomed and gone forever (for the Final Resurrection has yet to take place), and those who are alive and have been baptized into the life of Christ have no right to sit back and rest on their laurels in bliss just yet...

Trinity Episcopal Church – All Saints 2019 (Year C) Sunday, November 3 rd AD 2019 Today we celebrate the Ancient Feast of All Saints: A day when the Church commemorates all of the Saints who have gone before us as well as our continued fellowship with them. Not as one might associate with a ghost, or the restless dead (for Halloween has passed), but a fellowship that exists between living souls, all co-existing in perfect unity before our God. Now how can one say that we exist in a living fellowship with those who appear to be dead? The ghosties and Ghoulies of Halloween have already been banished, snow has begun to cover the ground, and we’re all ready for Christmas . (Brace yourselves, the season of retail holiday-themed music has begun.) But even so, this (rather premature) desire for the coziness, warmth, friendship, and love of the holiday season speaks to who we are as human beings. We were built for community and intercommunion with each other...

Trinity Episcopal Church  Sunday, October 20, 2019       Lectionary:  Genesis 32:22-31,  Psalm 121,  2 Timothy 3:14-4:5,  Luke 18:1-8 “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Many years ago (when I was still but a young lad), I attended a large Church youth event called “Youthquake.” Although the name of the event sounds a bit silly (and one can only imagine how silly it sounded to middle schoolers), this annual youth event on the side of a mountain in North Carolina did allow me to deepen my faith as a new convert. For the most part it consisted of guitars and drums and smoke machines and a worship band playing some powerful come-to-Jesus songs (fresh off of their latest album of course). But these too helped me approach the Mystery of Christ as a young man - to know the ineffable the Mystery of God’s Love. I didn’t have any fancy theological terms for it at the time, but I knew that the Spiri...

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 26-27) These words of our Beloved Savior are some of what many call “the hard sayings of Jesus.” They are referred to as such because many of us Jesus Followers who would like to follow him in the Way of Love find such words jarring . We might even flinch at the thought of hating anyone. Especially our parents and friends and family. Upon hearing Jesus say these words for the first time, one can imagine someone in the crowd raising their hand saying…                         “Hold up.   Can you repeat that? I mean, I would prefer to not be alienated from my relations and… did you say carry a… cross?   Yeah… I...