Today, May 8, 2022 is the Fourth Sunday of Easter in the Armenian church calendar, and also in this country, the day when we celebrate our mothers. We are a very diverse group of people in this church; in age, country of origin, politics and personalities. But there are two indisputable things we have in…
‘You may think at first that this old music, this ancient church is irrelevant, just ‘in the way.’ But listen a few more times, come to worship and fellowship with us for a while and you will find that this old music, this old church is ‘in the Way’ with a capital W, meaning ‘in…
There is not, and there never will be an easy way to talk about the Armenian Genocide, because this was a great and complex evil that is beyond normal words to describe. That’s why perhaps the most accurate way to describe the Armenian Genocide is the original term used in our language Mets Yeghern. “Great…
As you may know, I like to have a joke in my sermons from time to time. I recently found out that today on Easter Sunday, it is even more appropriate. It is actually a long standing tradition in some Eastern Orthodox churches for the priests to come prepared with a joke on Easter Sunday.…
A story reads best when we can read ourselves into it. We might find a particular character delightfully or despicably relatable. Maybe it’s a relationship we long for or a mystery to unravel. We find ourselves imagining how to interact with this character and resolve that situation. When we are drawn into a story, it…
Jesus is no appeaser. He hates sin, self-righteousness, violence and injustice. But he has made his hates general. I am not aware of Jesus berating any individual, even when that individual was a known sinner, even when that individual was known to betray him. But Jesus was absolutely relentless in revealing the evil and hypocrisy…
So the other day when I was bringing the bulletins to church and setting up for Sunday, this teenager rides up on his skateboard and comes into church. [Loud] ‘Yeah I want an espresso double shot on ice with two raw sugars.’ Are you kidding’ I say, ‘bro, this isn’t Starbucks, this is St. Hagop…