Church of the Holy Trinity

Here we are – nearly at the end of Advent – one week from today all the preparations of Advent will be over and we will be celebrating the birth of the Christ Child.
Today I want to talk to you about Black Cake and Advent – because the two are closely related. Those of you who are not from the Islands will be saying “What on earth is Black Cake?” and those of you who are from the Islands will be saying “How come she knows about Black Cake?”
My grandfather was a sea captain and he owned a citrus plantation in the Islands. He moved his family there so that when he and my uncles were at sea, my grandmother and aunt could run the plantation – my mother was the youngest by far in the family so she didn’t get to do that. [...]

Today, we continue our Advent journey walking in the Light amidst darkness, with a call to “prepare the way of the Lord” and “make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God” as Isaiah says or to “Make ready the way of the Lord, clear a straight path” as Mark says.

Advent is a time of preparing our hearts, minds and our world for the coming of God. We wait in this time of darkness, hoping for the Light. As Sherman spoke of last week, many cultures and many faiths celebrate the hope for Light in the face of darkness during this time—Hannukkah, the Festival of Lights, with its 8 days of candle lighting celebrating how [...]

All of us here today have suffered sickness, have had troubles and tragedies, and perhaps have even faced despair and the death of a loved one. There isn’t one person here in this church who hasn’t experienced loneliness, felt overwhelmed, or at times felt hopeless and full of doubt.

We all wish we could face everything that life throws at us with courage and faith, but sometimes as Peter’s letter put it in today’s reading “You may have to suffer the distress of many trials.” We find ourselves experiencing a terrible “dark night of the soul,” and even when friends and family surround us with love we can feel lost and all alone.”

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Fear

Just last week we celebrated Christ’s rising from [...]

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24     Psalm 100      Ephesians 1:15-23     Matthew 25:31-46

by Sherman Hesselgrave

Holy One, you have called us to be the living stones with which you seek to build your realm of living justice on earth.  Make us worthy of this great calling, and open our hearts and minds to recognize your Spirit working in our midst.  Amen.

Last Wednesday, at the midweek Eucharist, we commemorated St Margaret of Scotland, whose feast day it was.  Margaret, the 11th-century Anglo-Saxon princess who married King Malcolm III of Scotland, used her position of privilege and her wealth to provide relief to the homeless, the hungry, and the orphaned, as well as to redeem many Anglo-Saxons who had been sold into slavery by their Norman conquerors.  Not [...]