James Derkits

Originally written for and published in the South Jetty Newspaper I remember attending a dinner shortly after I moved to Port Aransas at which one of our church members asked directly if I was a Democrat or Republican. She was active and outspoken in her party of choice, and I couldn't help but notice the campaign signs in her yard. I responded to her question with something like, "It really doesn't matter; that as a church, we should be about bringing people together, not dividing people." That was six years ago, and I feel that today even more than ever. I try to follow Jesus, who in his own time, sat down to break bread with people of divergent views and allegiances. He taught about political hot-button topics like taxes, and moved the conversation to a deeper, spiritual perspective, resisting the traps to agree with one polarity or another. St. Paul, in his letters, taught that as members of the Body of Christ, the old worldly identities fall away (no longer Je

Greetings Trinity by the Sea! Grace and peace to you on this, one of my very favorite Sundays of the year. It is a Sunday I would like to be with my church family, but I somehow let my retreat be scheduled the first week of Advent, and I am preaching this day at St. Mark's Gulfport, Mississippi. So thank you, once again, to our lay leadership. This may be a perfect way for us to start off a new year, with empowered lay people leading worship... Today is the first day of Year C, when we begin Luke's Gospel, and begin this new season of Advent: Advent. It comes around to us once again; around: it is round like the full moon we saw last week. Round is the right word for this season. Advent is unlike the frenzy of the secular new year we celebrate on Dec 31. That new year is more like a straight line pointing to what we always expect to be new and different, complete with magic glasses which must be expected to help us see into 2019. The secular new year is linear, we make new r