Loosed Canon

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany Yr A February 23, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9 Have you ever attended a lecture or class or conference and just thought to yourself “What a waste of time! What on earth am I doing here?”  Let me tell you, in over 30 years of attending professional and industry conferences, I have asked myself that question many times.  When I was young, it was still a fun thing to go to various conferences, meet new people, listen to their ideas, and get lots of free swag that probably ended up in giant landfills.  Nowadays, time is too precious to waste on listening to talking heads and boastful colleagues, so there are only a few key conferences that I attend.  And I attend them because I get something meaningful out of them.  I walk away changed.  Changed by new ideas, new perspectives and new knowledge.  And when those things change me and ...

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany Yr A February 16, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37 I’ve been blessed to have been a graduate student twice in my life. Once as a seminarian, obviously, but I also went to law school and subsequently practice law for many years. Law students all go through a very similar pattern of being during their three years in law school, and lasts for about the first year after graduation, into their first job. The pattern is this: In the first year, law students are overwhelmed by the fact that they either know nothing or very little about the study they are embarking on. In the second year, with a few classes under their belt, they start to think they know everything about the law and being a lawyer. And in their final year in law school and first year on the job, they again realize that they, in fact, know very little about legal practice. (To be clear, I fell shamel...

The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord February 2, 2020 St. Michael’s Episcopal Church The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath Gospel: Luke 2:22-40 Last Monday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The day pays tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms an unwavering commitment to counter antisemitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance that may lead to group-targeted violence. The date marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945. For prisoners and Allied troops alike, liberation of the death camps of the Holocaust was a shock to the senses – at once a dream come true and a nightmare come to life. Soldiers streaming through the gates of the camps often were confronted not by German soldiers but by the sight and smell of abundant death, which the Nazis had left behind in their retreat. Just as disturbing were the signs of life – sk...