Two recent sermons were recorded. I did not title them, so if you love the titles, I deserve no credit.

• February 25 (Lent 2B)
• March 11 (Lent 4B)

Since I've tended to work in small parishes, I haven't preached on Transfiguration in August. At least I suspect I was on vacation the last time it rolled around…

To avoid: making it just a metaphor. I remember criticizing that tactic in a sermon as a seminarian, and then doing it myself in the same sermon. Whoops.

Character focus: I might focus on Peter. I love the image of trying to hold onto the experience, to hold onto the encounter with the holy. He wants to build the huts because he wants it to last. But it is fleeting by its very nature. This is so like our own encounters with the divine. (And most charitably, I suspect it is behind most change avoidance in the church–we want it to be like it was when things were better, while ignoring that things are totally different now.)

Connecting to Holy Week: I was reading Rowan Williams's Ray of Darkness (or Opeb to Judgment if you read it in the original English) yesterday, and in one sermon (Transfiguration before Lent), he observes that the next time we see Jesus in the ground in prayer is in Gethsemane. That struck me as quite profound. I might go with that, but I'm tempted to with Peter, since he's my favorite.