PHOTO CREDIT: © Solitafoto | Dreamstime.com A bishop carries something we call a crozier, which is really a symbol for the staff a shepherd carries. I carry one as the bishop of the church, the chief shepherd over the Diocese of Central Florida, and also as someone who is subject to Jesus’ ministry to me. If…

When I heard the news, I was sitting in the airport in Louisville, Kentucky, my CNN and Twitter feeds exploding. My natural reaction was to keep the horror of this event at a distance, keeping my heart safe from grief and outrage. But slowly, as an answer to prayer, the sadness, the weariness, the empty…

Each spring, our churches have a Collect that honors Edward Thomas Demby and Henry Beard Delany, the first and second African-American bishops consecrated in The Episcopal Church. As the prayer says, they, “though limited by segregation, served faithfully to [God’s] honor and glory” (Lessons Appointed for Use on the Feast of Edward Thomas Demby and…

Genuine Christian commitment takes courage, more now than ever before. But how do we obtain it? What will make us brave? We live in a world that is more and more suspicious of genuine religious commitment. Many of the people we know would prefer not that we would have no religious faith, but that our…

A Profane Horror Have you ever considered the crucifixion of Jesus? When you pray and meditate on it, his physical death is nothing less than what Jürgen Moltmann called “a profane horror”—the mutilated body of Jesus strung up on a cross, so disfigured by the lacerations and the wounds of the lashings and beatings that…

Christ’s journey to the cross is one of isolation. Though surrounded by crowds, he is entirely alone. The only thing he has is the determination God placed within him to walk out what he clearly acknowledges is a predetermined path. And on this path, he exhibits two key qualities that encapsulate both his mission and…

Not long ago, I was in a meeting at one of our churches, a small group of four or five people that included two women. And as the meeting concluded, we started talking about upcoming events on the church calendar. And one of the women said, with a twinkle in her eye, “Well, I just…

Some of the world’s best stories contain astonishing contrasts. Fairy tales have given us a beauty and a beast, an ugly duckling and a beautiful swan, an innocent Little Red Riding Hood and an evil wolf. Or what about A Tale of Two Cities? Here, Charles Dickens brought us “the best of times” and “the…

What do you think about when you hear the word Lent? The world bombards us with questions: “What are you doing for Lent?” “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” “How long do you think you can go without Starbucks [or fast food, or sugar, or whatever they think might be a typical…

I find the season of Lent a tremendous relief. We enter into this season together, acknowledging openly and honestly that we don’t measure up. We all fall short of what God has called us to be. We live in a world that is simultaneously beautiful and disastrous, a world filled with great injustices, horrors, and…