By Mark Ryan

• Take Comfort by Mark Ryan (12/4/2014)
  Second Sunday of Advent Isaiah 40:1-11 2 Peter 3:8-15a A week ago Saturday, I heard myself mumble “so much for Thanksgiving.” We gathered with new friends, a family in many respects the mirror image of our own, and we had eaten like princes, albeit a feast we (or, certain among us) had a significant role in preparing. The people Jaimee and I once mentioned we should incorporate into our celebration for fear they had nowhere else to go conveniently dropped out of mind in the later stages of planning. Our habit of pondering how good it would be to reach out to the lonely has not yet become a skill for making it happen. Or, perhaps, such skills are subject to perpetu...
• Deadly Distractions by Mark Ryan (10/9/2014)
  Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Matthew 22:1-14 On a recent morning, after listening to my wife read the gospel passage where Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a wedding banquet, my mind, distracted by a crying child and the anticipation of a day of teaching, was able only to form a somewhat vague prayer: “Lord, help us to discern the kingdom of heaven, and to turn our hearts towards it.” When Jesus begins this parable, Matthew has just told us that the religious authorities in the temple have passed from indignation to aggression. Only fear of the crowds is holding them back. (Mt 21:46) “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a ...
• The Self Under Attack by Mark Ryan (8/19/2014)
  Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 1:8-2:10 OR Isaiah 51:1-6 Psalm 124 Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:13-20 We live in times of anxiety about identity. Philosopher Charles Taylor suggests that modern people are especially pressed to play some active role in determining who we are. We construct our identities not only in conversation with others, though this is an important part of the process. We are also involved in a “self-conversation,” as the story of our lives will often be an uneasy weaving of various t...
• Something to Do by Mark Ryan (7/16/2014)
  Sixth Sunday after Pentecost Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Genesis 28:10-19a Psalm 139 Romans 8:12-27 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 A couple of weeks ago our family moved about 180 miles south and east to Dayton, OH, In the spring, I had been offered and accepted a job teaching Christian ethics to business students at the University of Dayton. I have been out of full time work for two years. To get this job was a homecoming: I was now “Lecturer in Christian Ethics” at a good university. What’s more, in coming to this position I am being welcomed by fri...
• Coming In, Going Out by Mark Ryan (5/7/2014)
  Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 2:36-47 1 Peter 2:19-25 John 10:1-10 Theologian David McCarthy, in a recent book on the Communion of Saints, puts forward the notion of “social desire.” “Our social desire,” he writes, “is our desire for shared life. It is a desire for a meaningful life. It is a desire and hope that my everyday endeavors do not stop with me, that who I am as son, brother, friend, father, theologian, neighbor and coach does not end with how it makes me feel…” Rather, he avers, social desire seeks connection with others in a metaphysical framework that orients us socially, makes us who...
• Doing Well to Remember, Remembering to Do Well by Mark Ryan (2/26/2014)
  Eighth Sunday after Epiphany Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Exodus 24:12-18 Psalm 2 OR Psalm 99 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9 Traveling south on I 465 around Indianapolis one comes face to face with a ginormous billboard that asks: ‘Who is Jesus?’ For me, the question interrupts a flow of consciousness—call it “utilitarian consciousness”—related to the objects on which my gaze (restlessly) rests—mostly corporate logos for hotel chains, personal injury lawyers, and the occasional public health message “1 ou...
• To Feel as Christians by Mark Ryan (10/30/2013)
  Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 Psalm 119:137-144 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 Luke 19:1-10 “I am consumed by anger, because my enemies forget your words.” (Ps 119:139) “But for those who freely serve you, for them, you are their joy. And this is the happy life, this alone, to rejoice in you, from you, through you.” (Augustine, Confessions) The Christian life goes hand and hand with a peculiar palette of emotions. At times I’ve reflected that to b...
• Praying for the Nation’s Peace and Justice by Mark Ryan (8/29/2013)
  Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 2:4-13 Last week, in our Episcopal church, the prayers of the people began with these two petitions:

  Let us pray for the Church and for the world. Grant, Almighty God, that who confess your name may be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal your glory in the world. Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another and serve the common good. (Followed by a short period of silence, and then: “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”)

  How does praying as the church, the holy people of God, united as one, inform our...
• Tensions in the Law by Mark Ryan (7/9/2013)
  Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Amos 7:7-17 OR Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Psalm 82 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37 Law and land are themes running through this week’s lectionary readings. In Deuteronomy, Moses spells out the law for the Promised Land that the Israelite’s will soon inhabit. In Luke, Jesus discusses Torah and its interpretation with a young lawyer as he journeys to Jerusalem, a journey that requires many Israelites to pass through the land of the ...
• Overcoming Epistemology by Mark Ryan (5/23/2013)
  Trinity Sunday Psalm 8 “…one God, the one beginning of all things, the wisdom by which every soul is wise, and the gift by which all things blessed are blessed…the Trinity of one substance…the beginning to which we return, the form (or pattern) we follow after, the grace by which we are reconciled…the one God whose creation gives us life, through whose re-forming we live wisely, by the love and enjoyment of whom live blessedly.” - Augustine, Retractions The doctrine of the Trinity can present itself as quite an intellectual puzzle, perhaps especially to the monotheistic believer, and it is therefore rightly called a “mystery.” However, attending to Trinitarian orthodoxy and its implication of us and God can bring spiritual re...
• Believing and Proclaiming by Mark Ryan (4/16/2013)
  Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 9:36-43 Psalm 23 Revelation 7:9-17 John 10:22-30 Sharing a household with beloved in-laws who watch TV regularly and don’t hear as well as I do, I have learned to turn away from a blasting televisions, as it strives to capture my attention with its show of urgency or of overwhelming sensation. Yesterday afternoon was somewhat of an exception. When my dear mother in law instructed me in a whisper to ‘turn on the TV’—she was on the phone at the time—I felt a sense of foreboding. As I pondered the clicker,...
• Difficult Freedom by Mark Ryan (3/6/2013)
  Fourth Sunday of Lent Joshua 5:9-12 Psalm 32 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 With regard to last week’s readings, Jim McCoy began in meditation on William Stringfellow’s description of the freedom of the church… “you are freer than you think.” During Lent, worship in our congregation recalls repeatedly Jesus’ temptation in the desert, which echoes the Exodus from Egypt and the Israelites’ wandering in the desert. Prior to the gospel reading, we sing “forty days and forty nights/thou was fasting in the wild/forty days and forty nights/tempted, and ye...
• Holy Families? by Mark Ryan (12/26/2012)
  I Samuel 2:18-20, 26 Col 3:12-17 OR Col 3:12-21 Luke 2:41-52 I have been claimed both as a member of an unhappy family and of a happy family. The unhappy one I was born into and the happy one I was adopted into through marriage. I am speaking of natural families here. As my family of origin was stricken by a failed marriage, I have a hard time believing that the distinction between happy and unhappy families is not a deep and important one. Perhaps Tolstoy meant to respect this important distinction when he wrote that “Happy families are alike; every unhappy ...
• A Right to an Answer? by Mark Ryan (10/17/2012)
  Job 38:1-7 Do we have the right to an answer from God? In the past few weeks the Old Testament readings have taken a quick trip through Job. It began, somewhat strangely, in Job 2 where Satan convinces God to allow him to attack Job’s body, having previously decimated his property. Such an attack is necessary to test Job’s righteousness, while God protect Job’s life commanding Satan not to kill him. This is part of the prologue of the book. Scholars divide it into a prologue, followed by the “poetic dialogues” between Job and his friends (chs 3-31), the “Elihu speeches” (chs 32-37) and two speeches by God each followed by a response by Job (38.1-42.6). An epilogue (42.7-17) brings the book to a close. ...
• The Mystery of Agency by Mark Ryan (8/8/2012)
  Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 In this week’s Old Testament reading, we come to the climax of Absalom’s rebellion against his father, David, and the culmination of David’s own actions as King of Israel. Here we find David’s character – his weaknesses and his strengths – summed up. The story line follows David’s displacement from Jerusalem, the espionage and strategy leading to war against Absalom, and the King’s return. The lectionary highlights David’s disposition toward his son and the seemingly inevitable course of violence. David’s desire for his son to be spared in the imminent attack upon his forces echoes his willingness for reconciliation following Absalom’...
• Speaking Out by Mark Ryan (4/10/2010)
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  Our readings for this week show both the irrepressible quality of the good news about what God has done for Israel in Jesus Christ (Acts 5) and why that is so—that is the divine origin of the irrepressibility (John 20:19-31). To begin with the scene in Acts 5:27, the text asks us to imagine a dramatic conflict where the revelation of God comes crashing up against the conventions—ideologies, r...
• Love and Virtue by Mark Ryan (1/25/2010)
  I Corinthians 13:1-13 I have never found it easy to move from scripture to theological concepts like virtue when I am teaching. A gap seems to grow up within the flow of my thinking. Kenneth Kirk, a former Anglican bishop of Oxford, noted in a work on the Christian moral life that “from the Bible alone we can choose any one of innumerable different passages or pictures as a groundwork…” He names parts of the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the “hymn of love” (1 Cor. 13) as good choices. “Yet it is to be noticed… that Western theology, at all events… has on the whole chosen to base its picture of the Christian ideal not on any one of these scriptural foundations, but upon a pagan classification of virtue.” I find solace in Bishop Kirk’s...