maundy-thursday – Storied Grace

A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 2, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35; Psalm 116:1, 10-17

In a Colorado meadow, there is a carousel. It’s called the Carousel of Happiness, and you will hear laughter and the classic carousel tune played from an old theatre organ. You will see 57 hand-carved wooden animals—tigers and swans and rabbits—painted with bright colors in a restored 1910 building, with outdoor light streaming in, surrounded by flowers and mountains. It’s an idyllic vision, and you can’t help but smile. And you just might run into the owner Scott Harrison, a Marine Corps veteran and old fashioned woodworker. But what does this have to do with Easter? What does this have to do with the table, and the cross, and the tomb? What do any of our lives, the ordinary and extraordinary, have to do with Easter? Everything. And I want to tell you about it over these three holiest of days.

A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2025 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I visited Mary in her home. It was a room in a nursing care facility; far from the best one in town. Just a single room. She kept the place dark. It was like going into a tomb. Mary was 97 years old and had lived in that dark room for going on 20 years. She had no family, no friends, she said. She had called because she was Episcopalian once, when she was a child. She had been baptized in an Episcopal church, and her aunt took her to Sunday school sometimes. Not often, it didn’t sound like. She didn’t like the nursing home chaplain who had come by, so she called me. She called and asked me to step into her darkness, into this living tomb at the end of the hall. I stayed for an hour or so, and she told me her story. I will share her story with you over the next three days.

Tag: maundy-thursday

Carousel Medicine

He Remembers Us