Ascension Written Sermons

“Setting us free to see” The Rev. Canon Patricia M. Grace Epiphany IV – Year B Mark 1:21-28 Church of the Ascension January 28, 2018 My uncle, my dad’s brother, Charlie, was born in 1939. His would be a hard life – and everyone knew it from the start. Because Charlie was born with Down Syndrome – which meant he would look different than others, suffer from a variety of physical complaints like heart defects, as well as many learning disabilities. On the day of his birth, the doctor advised my grandmother to put Charlie away – he told her to hand over her baby to an institution and forget about him. That doctor saw him, not as a her newborn son, but a problem to be dealt with. My grandmother declined to do that – choosing, instead, to take him home; to feed him for weeks multiple times a day with a medicine dropper… because he could not seem to learn to suck. Several years later, when he was about four - he proved to be a handful… mostly, because my grandpare...

“Justified by the nature of God” The Rev. Canon Patricia M. Grace Epiphany III – Year B Jonah Church of the Ascension                                  January 21, 2018 Brothers and Sisters,             today we’ve been shortchanged by the Revised Common Lectionary. Because we get only a wee snippet from the Book of Jonah     in our Old Testament reading… Well, I am fixing to remedy that – because this is a book that contains an ancient story,             which has great relevance for our current times. Most of us know a little about Jonah –             the prophet who spent three days in the belly   of a great...