The Encouraging Thomist

Jesus Calls the Fishermen Icon I. His name was "Pappa."  His actual name was Harold Brown, more specifically,   but to the ones he cared for,    he was simply known as "Pappa Brown." In the 1960s,  Pappa Brown was a pastor in the town of Covington, Louisiana,   and one day,    Pappa Brown was called by Jesus     to do something foolish. He heard the voice of Jesus calling him  to start a children's orphanage. Except, there was one tiny little logistical problem:  he had no building,   no money,    and no space in his family's home     to do anything that even looks like orphanage work. But Harold Brown did have one thing:  an unshakable faith in God to provide. So Harold started praying.  Praying every day,   almost hourly,    and asked Jesus to provide, if this is what he needed to be doing. And then Harold did something extraordinary. He ...

                        Larry R. Benfield                         Epiphany 2 – Year A                         19 January 2020                        Have you noticed how hard it is these days to serve anyone a meal that everyone can enjoy? There are now so many diets that form our food choices. Christian Wiman, a poet and person of deep faith, has a poem in this month’s Poetry Magazine whose first line is “All my friends are finding new beliefs,” and four lines later names some of them: Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon. Only the last one sounds the least bit enticing. Part of what he says in the poem is that life can be so complicated, as in all these partiular new “knowledges” or explantions of how things work that we think will sav...

The Baptism of Christ I. "I need to be baptized by you,  and yet you are coming to me?" That's what John the Baptist says to Our Lord Jesus this morning,  but I imagine that might also be what some of us this morning   might be asking ourselves: "Why does Jesus come to be baptized by John this morning?" And there are good reasons for thinking about this as well. After all, it says explicitly in the Holy Scriptures  that John the Baptist came proclaiming repentance   and that he was baptizing people who came to repent of their sins. But the Holy Scriptures also say that Jesus Christ, the Son of God,  was without sin,   the perfect spotless Lamb of God    who takes away the sin of the world     by taking it upon himself for us. How do we reconcile Jesus's sinlessness  with his desire to be baptized by John? II. Well, to get at this complicated question,  let's consider a few things at t...

I. It's the twelfth day of Christmas, y'all!  So, that means that I will,   in full honesty,    still wish you a very merry Christmas. Christmastide, as it is sometimes called,  brings with it many great traditions handed down through the years. Like the tradition of lights on our Christmas trees,  which was a tradition that was potentially started   by the Reformer Martin Luther himself [https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/december/why-do-we-have-christmas-trees.html] But, in local Christmas observance,  my family growing up,   and likewise my family now,    has a tradition of watching a very particular Christmas movie     in celebration of the season. That movie is the Muppet Christmas Carol.  And it is,   in my uninformed opinion,    the best movie adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol ever made. And, for as many great things there are about this ...

The Apostle Paul Icon I. Ever since I can remember,  one of the essential things that my family did every Christmas season   was send Christmas cards. And not just any Christmas cards.  No, they were homemade Christmas cards.   Cards that had a little paragraph about how our family was doing    and what all we had been up to in the previous year. Mom always headed up the effort to make sure that all of our extended family  stayed up to date on what all the Harris's were up to.   And when I moved off to college,    I became responsible for writing my little paragraph of my life     and what all I did that previous year. And, you know, it was an exercise that some years was easy  and some years was much harder. Because, you know, when you write a Christmas card  you only have a certain amount of space on the card,   and so you have to pick and choose what kinds of things you share. Of...

Jesus Christ Appears to St. Thomas the Apostle  Icon Isaiah 35:1-10 Psalm 146:4-9 James 5:7-10 Matthew 11:2-11 I. Doubt is very taboo in our culture.  Isn't it? There are many many examples that one could give to this fact,  but there was a recent play that illustrates this taboo of doubt very effectively. And it is the play titled Doubt: A Parable.   This play, written by John Patrick Shanley in 2004,   went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. And, as you might guess from the title of the play,  doubt plays a huge role. The plot goes thus: The play is set in the fictional St. Nicholas Church School  in New York during the fall of 1964.   Father Flynn, a beloved and social justice oriented parish priest,    is in the pulpit speaking of the importance of uncertainty. He states, "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty." And then we ...

John the Baptist Icon Isaiah 11:1-10 Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12 I. A beloved colleague once told a story about his struggle with alcoholism. Travis* had started drinking in high school,  and his struggle worsened as he entered into college.  [*name changed for confidentiality] He was a regular at the parties at his university,  staying up far too late,   getting drunk and sleeping in until noon.    His freshman semester was easy,     and he was smart enough that he stayed up to date on his school homework      and took late classes in the afternoon so that he wasn't missing class. However, during his second semester,  things got worse.   He began missing class assignments,    showing up to class late,     hungover,      and unable to remember the lectures. And thus started the negative feedback loop  that comes with any a...