Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter - Where is your hope?

Acts 17:22-31 , Psalm 66:7-18 , 1 Peter 3:13-22 , John 14:15-21 

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

“Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3.15).

As a relatively newly ordained priest, I was invited by the rector for whom I worked to sit in with him as he did premarital instruction for a couple. 

Toward the end of the hour, Father Wise looked at each of them and asked, “Now, if you could change anything about the other person, what would it be?”  

Each responded much the same way, “Oh, I wouldn’t change anything about him.” “I love her just the way she is.” Now I couldn’t help but wonder—thankfully to myself and not out loud—“Are you kidding me?! You’ve got to be on drugs!”  I just assumed that they were lying to Father Wise, to each other, and, most problematically, to themselves. 

By then Cindy and I had by been married for ten years, but I don’t think it took ten days to figure out that each other might benefit from at least some improvement!  Isn’t it funny how opposite qualities which at first attract (she’s so smart and thoughtful and he’s so lively and talkative) can become such sore points (why won’t she say anything?! Won’t he ever just shut up?!).

No doubt such examples could be multiplied, but in the hope of avoiding divorce by the end of the morning, I’ve probably said quite enough already.

Service Bulletin for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

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Feast of Jackson Kemper

The Collect -

Lord God, in your providence Jackson Kemper was chosen first missionary bishop in this land, and by his arduous labor and travel congregations were established in scattered settlements of the West: Grant that the Church may always be faithful to its mission, and have the vision, courage, and perseverance to make known to all people the Good News of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Click here to learn more about Jackson Kemper, First Missionary Bishop in the United States, 1870.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter - Basking in the Light

Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

Rowan LeCompte died this past February at the age of 88. Rowan was born March 17, 1925 but often spoke of a different day as being his “second birthday.”¹ 

That special day was July 1, 1939, when Rowan was just fourteen.  It was an unusually cool and crystal clear Saturday in summer. It was a day that captivated his attention and inspired a lifelong passion.  

Having been torn between his interest in architecture and painting, that day was the key that unlocked the door to both, when Rowan was taken by an aunt to Washington, D.C., to see the august buildings of the nation’s capital, including an eventful stop at the National Cathedral.   

The National Cathedral, begun three decades earlier, was still very much a work in progress. Walking up those steps and through the temporary west doors along scaffolding-lined walls, Rowan recalls that the organist was playing Handel and then he saw what seemed to be light “floating in the dark,” the rose window on the cathedral’s north end. 

In a 2009 NPR interview, Rowan said that the cathedral that day was “a magic, marvelous, dim, ravishingly beautiful place, and I was stunned.” He said, “It was as if heaven opened.”

Service Bulletin for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

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Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter - Good Shepherds Live with their Sheep

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10
Psalm 23

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

I have a picture in my office of Father Carl Wayne Babcock.  

Father Babcock served as a parish priest in Arkansas and as a teacher at the Episcopal school in Mississippi where I would later meet Cindy.

During his time in Arkansas, he took an interest in helping the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees and over the course of the next several years had some 140 Vietnamese living in his own home for various lengths of time while they moved toward self-sufficiency.

When I was a freshman at the University of North Texas, Father Babcock began as the Episcopal chaplain.  Being active in the Episcopal campus ministry and taking survey classes in the Old and New Testaments from him, I got to know him well.  In my senior year, I lived with him together with a lovely Vietnamese couple whom he had taken in.

He was one of those brilliant people who despite his humble manner seemed to know an amazing amount about ever so much.  When he was in seminary, he had been able to live for a time in Jerusalem (where he picked up Modern Hebrew), in France (where he perfected his French), and in Oxford, before returning to finish his Master’s of Divinity at Seabury Western. 

A perpetual student he would later go on to earn an additional master’s degrees in counseling, bolstering native gifts with study. He just had the knack for counseling, for being “fully present” when you spoke with him, a way of making you believe that your hangnail was a matter of genuine concern not only to him and maybe even to God.

His life was one of considerable suffering. 

Service Bulletin for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

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Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter - Seeing More Clearly

Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

All too often and usually without much thought or particular intention on our part at all, we can find ourselves looking at our world and maybe even ourselves, in a sort of fixed and rigid way.  Seeing things, if you will, through a particular lens, one to which we have grown accustomed and, in their familiarity to us, have become comfortable. 

Some of us see our world through rose-colored glasses, especially when we look back upon a particular time and place and all those stresses and strains that may well have caused more than a few vexations are now thankfully faded memories, and we idealize the way things were, and maybe we feel ought to be now.

Others of us tend to be more oriented to the present.  And of those present-minded folk, some of us are “uniquely” blessed with such exacting vision that we are able to see with amazing clarity all the cracks in the walls and even the ever-so-slight discolorations and imperfections in the way things are.

Yet there are still others who seem to have an uncanny clairvoyance, the remarkable ability to peer into future, imagine the way things not only could be but can be with initiative, guidance, and, if need be, blood, sweat, and tears.  “Visionaries” we call them.

John Hughes, the late bishop of Kensington, will apparently not go down in history as such a visionary.  In the mid 1980s, an oil executive in his early 30s went to see the bishop in order to share with him his growing sense that God was calling him to leave the business world and become a priest.  After some time Bishop Hughes declared rather flatly, “I see no future for you in the Church of England.”¹ 

That young oil executive with no future in the church? 

Service Bulletin for the Third Sunday of Easter

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