Ascension Written Sermons

The Rev. Robert P. Travis Epiphany 3rd Sunday Sermon  – 8:00am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN RCL Epiphany Year C  1/27/2012   Scripture Text: Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21 Sermon Text: Ten years ago this month, I was in the process of exploring what God was calling me to do. I was engaged to be married to Jackie, and I was on my way to Seminary in the fall. I was also actively serving God as a youth minister in an Episcopal church, and that January I took a group of young people to a conference, outside Albany, New York. At that conference some of the boys and I went to a session and heard someone speak about an organization called Compassion International. She was very inspirational, and that group of five boys were inspired. They wanted to go to the table set up outside, and consider sponsoring a child somewhere in the world. They discussed it amongst themselves, and decided that with the allowance they e...

1 st Sunday After Epiphany: Jan. 13, 2013 The Episcopal Church of the Ascension To See the Face of God The Reverend Dr. Howard J. Hess I. Introduction. Echoes of the past in the present and the future. The older I become, the more fully I comprehend that new learning in life often comes in repeated experiences that unfold in circles. Once I believed that life experience was linear; that life would expand until roughly the age of 30. As time passed, I changed this age to 35, then 40, then 45, and onward, with some trepidation. But as I’ve lived on, I have discovered a wonderful aspect of God’s creativity – that our lives unfold in circles; and that when we are at our God-given best, we circle back to old experiences and old insights. Each time we re-visit them, there is something new to be learned. It has become my belief that it is very likely that we will continue to learn and grow even as we enter our next resurrected lives. Thus it is with my understanding of t...

The Rev. Amy Morehous Festival Eucharist Feast of the Epiphany January 6, 2013   When I was young, my mother, sister and I only had one nativity scene, and we loved it. It had many, many figures, and each one had been poured, fired, hand-painted and hand-glazed by my grandmother, my father’s mother, who died the month before I was born. On the bottom of each piece, they were even individually signed. We always set it up in the living room, on the hearth of the fireplace. My sister and I would very carefully act out scenes with them every year. That nativity set had many adventures. One Christmas, when my sister and I were older - I think I was 10 or 11- my sister and decided it would be a good idea to roll a basketball around in the living room. (What could possibly go wrong with that?) Of course, someone missed a pass - I really don’t remember who. It would be convenient to blame my sister, since she’s in South Carolina, but it was probably me. The basketball rolle...

The Rev. Robert P. Travis Epiphany Sunday Sermon  – 8:00am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN RCL Epiphany Year C  1/6/2012 Scripture Text: Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7,10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12 Sermon Text: The Epiphany that we celebrate every year on January 6th is one of the high feasts of the church year. It’s one of the biggest events we celebrate. For many Christians around the world January 6th is much more important than December 25th. But because of our cultural customs, many of you here will not have experienced annually the feast we have on this day, and that we will have tonight. But this year it happens that the Epiphany falls on a Sunday, so we all get a chance to ponder these amazing events. You all know the story, of the wise men who came to bring gifts to Jesus? We see it every year in Christmas Creche scenes, those three men dressed like kings standing wi...