On Laetare Sunday, I was looking for a "respite" from this sorry winter we've been experiencing. On that particular day, the temperatures got up around 70. I'm uploading this the following Tuesday, and we've been hit with several inches of blowing snow. Maybe I should have prayed for more than a respite.

I'm sorry to be late with this upload. As I recall, I looked at Jesus and the Samaritan woman as a way of identifying various anxieties of human life.

How can we act with true hope, and not give in to a despairing attitude? Jesus gave an answer through his transfiguration. We can perceive, along with Peter, James, and John, that the good is triumphant, even when we can see only evil surrounding us.

Yes, this year we are going to talk about sin. Jesus' resistance of temptation is a good occasion for us to think about sins of recklessness, as well as their opposite extreme: sins of shrinking fearfulness toward all the challenges of life.

Today we are "searching for Bobby Fischer" and thereby presenting a counterexample for the Beatitudes. We are all tempted to make the activity that most gratifies us our only goal in life. If we accede to the temptation, we tell ourselves that we are providing ourselves with happiness, but in fact we cut ourselves off from the deeper acceptance of the world and our place in it which in fact brings joy to us.

DISCIPLES are people who submit willingly to a certain DISCIPLINE. We can think of certain people or ideas that have excited us. At one time or another, we have wanted our lives to be reflections of the thing that fascinates. To be a disciple of Jesus means to be open to the many ways in which he calls us to re-think our own existence.

This was the first sermon for Auburn's observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in its centennial year. The venue: Cornerstone Community Church. I forgot about recording until a couple of minutes into it. Before turning it on, I got a good laugh when I said: "The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was started by Episcopalians who shortly thereafter became Roman Catholics. In mentioning this, I do not mean to presuppose any outcome."

We, the church, the assembly, are called to holiness. "Holy" is a word rich in significance; yet it can be an obstacle to us when we seek to understand ourselves before God. We welcome the encouragement of all who have accepted the challenge of the call to holiness.

Baptism is death. This is not the sort of polite conversation that one expects when an infant undergoes baptism. But this is precisely why Jesus underwent baptism: to be in solidarity with us who face this very strange thing called mortality.

We live in accelerated times. Today we attempt to grasp what is of value in this time and for eternity. We accept the challenge of accepting a gift of universal significance to humanity.