Sand on the Streets: Cultivating the Desert in the City

What might interest [God] on His strolls in our cities could be to find oases of spirituality 

where there are individuals capable of waiting and hoping instead of hurrying and worrying.

— Alessandro Pronzato

Lenten Luncheon at St. John’s Episcopal Church

Psalm 46 • Luke 10:38–42

Scroll Down for the Texts of the Scriptures

Sermon available on YouTube by clicking HERE.
and as a PDF by clicking HERE.

The Sermon

Come, Holy Spirit, and kindle the fire that is in us.
Take our lips and speak through them.

Take our hearts and see through them.

Take our souls and set them on fire.  Amen.

By Way of the Desert

Good afternoon. It’s good to see you all, and it’s good to be here today, on loan, as I am, from Pleasant Valley Middle School. I must say that it is quite a treat to be speaking to a group of adults, most of whom want to hear what you have to say, which I must say, is rather different from my daily experience as a middle school teacher.

     Well, today is the last of our Lenten Luncheons, and the question we have been asking these past several Wednesdays is, “How do we engage people in God’s mission of reconciling the world?” Each of the speakers have answered this question in their own way, and today, I want to focus on the how of that question. In this sense. I don’t want to focus on what we do, but on how we do, that is, on the manner with which we go about participating in God’s mission of reconciling all people to himself and to one another. I want to reflect on this by taking you on a brief trip to the Egyptian desert.