Last week we removed the brass pulpit from Trinity and took it to Houston where it was refinished and sealed. On Friday we reinstalled it and I must say that results are lovely. The altar guild is pleased because they no longer have to polish it. We thank those members whose gifts made this improvement to our worship space possible.
e-piphanies from the Trinity Pulpit
This is the pulpit of Galveston’s Trinity Church. It is a memorial to the Right Reverend Alexander Gregg, who was elected the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas at a convention held in this very place in 1859. I am honored to be able to proclaim the good news from this pulpit, where so many faithful preachers have stood before me. The important thing is not the pulpit or the preacher. The important thing is what happens in a pulpit – sermons. A sermon is an event through which divine inspiration intersects human intelligence and emotion so that transformation occurs. Terry Holms compared preachers to Hermes, the mythi-cal messenger of the gods. He said that there are three important things to understand about Hermes in Greek mythology: first, he had to travel through chaos to deliver the message entrusted to him; second, he had to subvert perceptions; and third, the message did not belong to him, but to the hearers of the message. Any preacher will tell you that the process of preparing and delivering a sermon is often chaotic, that subverting perceptions, getting people to look at things in a different way, is usually necessary, and that the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of the hearers pro-duces results we preachers never dreamed of. This pulpit and millions of other pulpits around the world, is the scene of count-less epiphanies every week. People are helped, lives are trans-formed, Christ’s Church is built up. So, whenever you see a pulpit, thank God for the times a preacher has helped you through a sermon and offer a prayer for those who are called and ordained to preach.
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