Loosed Canon

Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany Yr A January 26, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23 If you ever come to our home, you might notice that Charles and I like to collect books. And one kind of book we like to collect and read are cookbooks. We have cookbooks about vegan and vegetarian cooking, all of Julia Child’s cookbooks; books on Filipino, French, Moroccan, Hungarian, Palestinian, Jewish, New England and Southern cooking; books about baking, roasting and barbecuing. Books about French cheeses and books about German wines. It’s quite an array. Every so often I will just pick one up and flip through it, enjoying the list of ingredients and look at the glossy photos of freshly picked basil and sifted flour. It’s rare that I ever actually cook anything (that’s Charles’ passion). For the most part I’m engaging in a spectator sport where my mouth might water, but I’m not tempted to really do the work involv...

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany Year A January 19, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: John 1:29-42 Last Friday I was writing my sermon as I usually do on Fridays.  Sometime midday I got hungry for lunch and walked up Hope Street with no particular destination in mind.  I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, or even what I was hungry for.  There were the usual suspects – the Bagel shop, Aidan’s, Le Central – but they didn’t really pull me in.  Then I thought I would go to Baba Sushi, but I had met someone there for lunch the day before.  So, up and down Hope Street and Thames Street I walked.  I didn’t want to get in my car to drive somewhere for lunch.  But why couldn’t I just make up my mind?  I finally gave up and went home and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk and it was delicious and exactly what I wanted.  Have you ever found yourself in that situat...

First Sunday after the Epiphany (Baptism of our Lord) January 12, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath Psalm 29; Matthew 3:13-17 While I am not a great baker, I do like to bake.  And because I think all meals should start with dessert first, I typically like to bake sweet things – cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, etc.  Aside from the deliciousness of baked goods, I’ve always been fascinated by the process of baking.  Essentially, you take a disparate group of ingredients – for example, eggs, butter, milk, oil, spices, salt (maybe) – and mix them all together.  Usually, I say a little prayer as I am ready to put the unbaked mix into the oven.  A few minutes later – presto-chango! – a beautiful cake emerges.  It’s not really a matter of faith that the cake will rise, or the cookies will take shape.  It’s a matter of science.  And the key scientific ingredient in baking is the presence of a binding agent, w...

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas January 5, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: Matthew 2:13-15; 19-23 The few weeks after Christmas and New Years are always a bit interesting. On the one hand there is still, for some, the glow that the holiday season imparts on us – we’ve spent just enough time with our extended families, we’ve eaten delicious meals with abandon, and we caught up with friends we might not have seen for months or years. On the church side of things, we waited with great anticipation during Advent for the coming of the Christ Child, culminating with a beautiful Christmas Eve service at which we celebrated his coming, with angels singing on high and a sense that all is good with the world. And for those who come to church only on Christmas and Easter, that joy of the Nativity story, and all the joy and excitement in finding the Christ Child in the manger, ends there and is preserved in our memories until it ...