Greetings! This is “The Vicar’s View.”  It’s a place where I hope to share much of my writing and thoughts either through sermons, articles, teaching, meditations or musings. My one hope in sharing these is that, whoever you are, you might find words here which draw you closer into your relationship with the God and/or (hopefully ‘and’!) into relationship with the Church. If so, it will have been time well spent. Welcome.

A word about the title and how it relates to the goals of this site:

The phrase “the Vicar’s View” came out of a conversation with a member of the flower guild at the church where I served. She was distressed by the state of one or two sprigs in the weekly display and stuck them in the back, saying, “well that won’t matter, that’s the Vicar’s view.” This struck me as beautifully alliterative but also illustrative: as clergy we are often looking at the parts of the world no one wants to see. If most people are content to gaze upon the beautiful frontal of perfect roses and day lilies, we are called to look behind the façade to the broken twigs hidden in back. And we’re called to do a few things with that perspective.

First we are to help each person bring those twisted and broken bits out into the light of God’s countenance so that they might be healed of thinking there is any part of themselves unworthy to present to God, whose property is always to have mercy. Second we are to help everyone understand that as individuals and as communities, we all are hiding some pretty gnarly branches behind the few gorgeous flowers we place strategically in the front. To pretend otherwise is exhausting and it is a hindrance to living a full life. Jesus’s life, death and resurrection teaches us that while as human beings we may be bonded by our brokenness, we are not bound by it.  And our third goal in bringing these broken bits to light is to help us all repent of those parts of ourselves of which we know to be less than righteous, so that we might help usher in more fully the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven. We are imperfect and our world is imperfect. That’s why we need God. As a Priest (or “vicar”), I consider it one of my great privileges to have a view on such matters and even more privileged to have something to offer to anyone else who is tired of hiding their broken branches in the back: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So welcome again to “The Vicar’s View” I hope you’ll come to appreciate looking at the world this way as much as I do.