All Saints Episcopal Church

We are created in the image of a great creator, one who plants and tends and love us into being. In that image, we are called to do the same.

Hear what Jesus says to his followers: "Take my yokeand learn from me." In fact the most efficient way to teach an animal to plow is to harness them to one who already knows how. Whether in a more gentle horse collar or the more primitive ox yoke the reality is that the ignorant beginner is yoked to one with whom to share the weight at the very least. And it doesn't take much more to realize that a yoke feels even better if we go in the same direction as the senior partner, to go in the direction being led.

20th annual Integrity Eucharist, kicking off Gay Pride Weekend in Atlanta. Guest preacher: The Rev'd Winnie Varghese, Episcopal chaplain at Columbia University in NYC.

Foundations of faith

Jeremiah 20:7-13, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

If we expect God to act in the world, we have to be the agents of change. By sharing ourselves and our faith with others, we can bring healing and inch the world ever closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.

In our Gospel today, we are introduced to a woman who has been suffering for years, well over a decade, with some sort of bleeding disease, probably a menstrual hemorrhage. She was, like so many of our most compelling biblical characters, an outcast. And, like so many of our most compelling biblical characters, she possesses a courage that far surpasses her brief mention in our Scriptures. Faith, yes, of course, faith just as Jesus pointed out, that leads to the reality of her healing. But she had, above all, courage to act upon that faith.

The only real foundation on which we can and should build is not our beliefs about God or about ourselves, but on the reality of the living God who is revealed most fully in Jesus' life and teaching and whom we sometimes talk of as the Holy Spirit.

Sermon, Second Sunday After Pentecost

Lest this attention to evangelism becomes just one more 'ought' in our lives, something with all the appeal of one of those diagnostic medical procedures we are all supposed to have from time to time, or another ethical piety, --something that is meant to be good for us, but that we do not really want to do, let me say something about what evangelism is not and something about what it is and can be for us.

Sermon, Day of Pentecost and confirmation Sunday.

The Rt. Rev'd J. Neil Alexander, Bishop of Atlanta, talks about the state of the diocese and takes questions from parishioners during his visit to All Saints' on May 11.