Loosed Canon

Pentecost 20 Sermon Yr C October 27, 2019 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: Luke 18:9-14 On Thursday night our Parables class got together to study and talk about another parable.  This time it was the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price.  Now I was a bit anxious about that parable, because everything I had read about it, all the commentary that I had studied, all seemed to give very tenuous meaning to the parable.  And the interpretations didn’t feel like they moved me forward in understanding Jesus or the Good News.  But, I found out after struggling with the parable last week and then debating it in class, that there was actually deep meaning there.  Of course there was. In fact, there were a few deep meanings that we as a class gleaned from the parable.  It was a reminder to me that sometimes Jesus doesn’t make things easy for us.  We need to work at our faith and spiritual lives – and use our brains...

Pentecost 19 Sermon Yr C 2019 October 20, 2019 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Luke 18:1-8             For those who are unfamiliar with the liturgy of the Episcopal Church or Anglican liturgy in general, they may be surprised that we have memorialized our prayers in our Book of Common Prayer.  They might even think it more surprising that our Book of Common Prayer only contains six forms of Prayers for the People and that a typical church only uses two or three of those forms in any given year.  That sounds quite stifling.  There appears not to be a lot of room for spontaneous prayer or creativity in there and it sounds as though it’s easy to get into a rut with the constant repetition of these prayers.               However, the forms in our Book of Common Prayer are suggested ...