"War No More" by the Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity This weekend is our annual Cantata Sunday, with beautiful music and images from around the world and throughout history. But one thing we will not be doing is reading and expounding upon the prophet's words for the weekend, which is why I want to take a moment to do so here. The passage, if we were to read it, would be from Isaiah 2:1-5. It is a song about the future establishment of God's house and kingdom when people will come t

"Magnificat" by Ben Wildflower Welcome to Advent! It is one of those funny things about this very short season - it gets full lickedy split. One minute you are on your way up the hill of the holiday rollercoaster for Thanksgiving and the next thing you know you're screaming "Woo-Doggies" on your way down towards Christmas Eve. We are not quite there yet. However, there is so much happening and so much coming in the next couple of weeks that Christmas Eve will be here before w

This weekend is Christ the King Sunday. And as I'm sure you've heard me say, it is New Year's Eve in the liturgical calendar - the end of the old year before it begins anew next Sunday with Advent. We will be looking at a passage from Jeremiah. In it, the prophet is responding to the extremely problematic state of affairs in ancient Judah. For several generations, the kings who have risen up over Israel did not follow God's commands. They tore the people apart by supporting o

One of my lesser known talents is that during university I served as a worship leader for one of our local college ministries. A whole lot of the music we used had some really bad theology. Like, really, really terrible. However, a few of the songs were dripping with scripture - much like our Book of Confessions - and I can still find myself singing them from time to time. There was one song in particular that was based on the psalms that we sang the night before I left to go