Mary’s prerogative was to bear Christ, so
’Tis preachers’ to convey Him, for they do,
As angels out of clouds, from pulpits speak ;
And bless the poor beneath, the lame, the weak.
If then th’ astronomers, whereas they spy
A new-found star, their optics magnify,
How brave are those, who with their engine can
Bring man to heaven, and heaven again to man ?

— John Donne
To Mr Tillman After He Had Taken Orders

IT IS FINISHED
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
25th of March 2018, Sunday of the Passion
Based on John 19. 30

WHAT MUST I DO NOW TO FOLLOW JESUS?
The Rev’d Richard Schaper
25th of February 2018, 2nd Sunday in Lent
Based on Mark 8. 21 – 28

Today’s sermon is different from what I usually try to preach—because today’s gospel portion is different from what we usually hear proclaimed. What we usually hear proclaimed is: the immensity of God’s love for us and for all creation. This indeed is how St Mark the evangelist begins his account of the gospel. Chapter one, verse one: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ is Good News because Jesus incarnates the immensity of God’s forgiving love. “For God SO LOVED the world that he sent his only beloved Son….”

But today’s gospel portion focuses not on God’s love for us, but rather on our response to God’s love. Today’s gospel verses are the hinge-point of Mark’s gospel—St Mark’s narrative is 16 chapters long and these verses are the conclusion of chapter 8. In them Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The theme that Fr Ellsworth has set for our Lenten Sundays is: “Hard things that we need to learn to say.” The hard thing that we need to say in response to today’s gospel portion is: “What must I do NOW to follow Jesus?”

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS
The Rev’d Dn Alberta Brown Buller
28th of January 2018, 4th Sunday after the Epiphany
Based on Mark 1. 21 – 28

Holy Spirit, take my words and speak to each of us according to our need. Amen.

We Episcopalians are accustomed to a certain order in the way we worship. After my ordination, I decided it would be a good time to experience other churches. I did what Dorothy called, “a church crawl.” For three months I visited Episcopal churches in other states and some with services in other languages. One time, Dave and I worshipped in a beautiful outdoor chapel at Lake Tahoe that even had coffee cup holders built right into the pews. Another time, I visited The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour in Oakland. Upon entering, I held my hand out to the usher for a bulletin. He had a look of surprise on his face as he said to me, “You know this service is in Mandarin, right?”

When I visited St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco and spoke with the Priest, just before the service, he said, “Oh, you’re a Deacon. Why don’t you proclaim the Gospel today?” It can be very spur of the moment there.

HERE I AM
The Rev’d Richard Schaper
14th of January 2018, 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
Based on 1 Samuel 3. 1 – 20

Before I begin the prepared sermon, I feel that it is important to address the undeniable fact that during this week the President of the United States made a public statement that referred to predominantly Black nations as *expletive* countries from which we should not receive immigrants and that “we should accept more people from countries such as Norway.” This statement is a direct insult to members of this congregation and of our community. It is an insult the American Constitution and to the values for which it stands, for which so many have fought and died—including immigrants from these nations. One of whose sons recently served as President of the United States.

This invective is in direct opposition to the way of Jesus Christ. Such a statement from the highest public official in our land should not go unchallenged by people of faith. Certainly as Episcopalians we have no choice but to call it out since we are bound by our baptismal vow “to uphold the dignity of every person.” Especially this weekend, we remember that America is defined by the dream of Dr. King, not by the slur of President Trump. I invite you to join me in praying for President Trump, that his heart may be softened and his tongue (and thumbs) tamed.

O COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
31st December 2017, 1st Sunday after Christmas
Based on John 1. 1 – 14

From John’s Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” May I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christmas continues; it goes on to the Feast of the Epiphany, the 6th of January, on its way to the Feast of the Presentation or ‘Candlemas’, the 2nd of February, when we mark the baby Jesus being presented in the Temple 40 days after he was born. The Christmas / Epiphany cycle commemorates three infancy epiphanies — the first to the poor shepherds, the second to the three Magi, and the third to the elderly, righteous Anna and Simeon.

WAITING ON GOD
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
24th December 2017, Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass
Based on John 1. 1 – 14.

We are made of waiting, every one of us. My daughter Gillian is great with child, her first, a son, expected 29th December. [Ed. note: Samuel Tamaoki was born on Twelfth Night, 5th January.] The baby boy in her womb is made of waiting. Our pageant’s baby Jesus, Maximillian, was made of waiting, as his mother Mariana can tell you. By the time we are grown up waiting is the one thing we know how to do. The most grown up of all of us is Mary Fay; she was born 15th July 1921. Just as we finished this pageant rehearsal yesterday, Mary died. She was waiting to be with her mother again.

We never stop waiting. We’re told that we don’t live often enough in the moment; the more I’ve grown the less anxious I am about that. When we give up trying, we are superb at it. We spend a quarter or more of our lives living in the moment, asleep. “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” [Shakespeare, MacBeth] A healthy soul has hopes, anticipates, pines, is always longing for something. That is life, get over it: looking forward for what we’ve got to do next, or looking backward with nostalgia or regret into what has passed.

SOW YOUR TEARS
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
17th December 2017, 3rd Sunday of Advent
Based on Psalm 126

“Do you know a cure for me?”
“Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.”
“Salt water?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Karen Blixen, Seven Gothic Tales

From Psalm 126: “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering sheaves.” May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We received guests this week. Paramount Pictures was here to shoot on location scenes for the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. John Karl Hirten has a screen credit. He played the organ for the Ave Maria scene in Prizzi’s Honor. I have no screen credit, but my first cure, St Bartholomew’s in the City of New York, has been the location for a number of movies. In Arthur, Dudley Moore finds his bride in the cloister, before the start of their wedding, to say that he can’t go through with it. In what becomes a vacant church, he and Liza Minelli have a heart-to-heart talk sitting on the chancel steps. In SALT, the Russian President is eulogizing a U. S. Vice President when Angelina Jolie (Evelyn Salt), with a shaped charge, takes the gorgeous mosaic floor of that chancel out from beneath his feet and shows him his walking papers.

A film shoot at your church doesn’t happen every day.

DON’T BE AFRAID
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
10th of December 2017, 2nd Sunday of Advent
Based on Mark 1. 1 – 8.

From Mark's Gospel: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” May I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Veni, veni Emmanuel, ‘Come, O come Emmanuel’ we sing in Advent. We hear from the prophet Isaiah, “A voice crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” We go back to the ancient prophecies, the foreshadowings of Jesus’ comings that we find in Scripture, and when we do two figures above all represent how we’re feeling, two who are there right from the start of the gospel story: John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and forerunner, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother.

It had been five hundred years since God had spoken to Israel. The people didn’t want to hear from God so God gave them what they wanted, the silent treatment. And now God breaks that silence, and John takes up and drives home the whole plot of the biblical story. ‘Behold,’ he announces, ‘something is about to happen and you’ve little idea what it is; how radical a change it will involve.’ Echoing Moses, who removed his shoes to approach God in the burning bush, “When the Promised One gets here,” John says, “I won’t be worthy even to untie his shoe.” So John the Baptist points forward, and says to anyone who will listen to him, ‘Everything you’ve always hoped for, everything you’ve longed for, the change, the freedom, the peace, is about to come.

It will be a shock coping with that, therefore ‘Make straight in the desert a highway for our God,’ he declares, quoting Isaiah.

COME, LORD JESUS
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
3rd of December 2017, 1st Sunday of Advent
Based on the Collect of the Day, and Luke 21. 25 – 28

From Luke’s Gospel: “Jesus said, ‘Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’” May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We know a boy whose family, in the late sixties, had a big champagne Rambler station wagon with the rear-facing back seat. He was in the third grade, and a new student at a grade school in New Mexico. He had not paid sufficient respect to some of the bullies in power so they were going to give him some rough justice in the open air, and it was coming to him the next day. He didn’t know what to do. He always walked home from school, but that evening he decided to ask his father for a ride.

The next day at school even boys he didn’t know were looking at him and pounding their fists into their hands. When the last class ended, the boy walked across the playground, stuck his chest out, and pretended his heart wasn’t pounding beneath it. “There he is!” he heard a bully shout, and the chase was on. He ran to the gate but it was an ambush: there was another group there waiting for him. They cornered him against the fence and moved in to, as the Romans would put it in Jesus’ day, ‘keep the peace’.

The Rev’d William McD Tully
4th March 2017 | The Celebration of a New Ministry
Based on the Sermon on the Mount

Sermon at the Institution of the Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, VIII Rector of St Stephen’s Church, Belvedere. The Rev'd Bill Tully is sometime Rector of St Bartholomew's Church in the City of New York. He was starting out as the new Rector of St Bart’s when he brought Fr Ellsworth on to the clergy staff to be Associate Rector in the Spring of 1995. The Rev’d Ellsworth was ordained a priest at St Bart's on the Feast of the Epiphany, 6th January 1996. See this article in the New York Times about the work that Bill Tully did at St Bartholomew’s: nyti.ms/2GQZqiR
Bill’s last sermon as Rector of St Bartholomew’s is here: nyti.ms/2E84eCM

2017 Sermon Archive

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