St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Meeteetse

04/02/2026

Join us for Good Friday Stations of the Cross and Easter morning service and brunch.

03/29/2026

The dust is the first thing you notice, and it is not subtle about it. It hangs in the air, kicked up by sandals and feet and what feels like half the city deciding to move at once. It settles on your skin, sticks to the sweat on your neck, and finds its way into your mouth every time you open it to shout. You can taste it, dry and earthy, mixed with the smell of animals and people and freshly cut branches that still carry that sharp green scent like they were just pulled from the tree five seconds ago. Someone bumps your shoulder hard enough that you almost lose your footing, and you realize personal space is not going to be part of today’s experience.

There is noise everywhere. Not background noise. Not polite conversation. The kind of noise that builds and rolls and takes over everything else. It starts with a few voices and then multiplies until it feels like it is coming from every direction at once.

“Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

You recognize the words from Psalm 118, but this is not someone quietly reading Scripture. This is loud. This is urgent. This is hope that has been waiting a long time finally getting an outlet, and it is not holding back.

You find yourself shouting too because it is contagious. Not in a peer pressure kind of way, more like your chest fills up with something and if you do not let it out you might actually explode a little. Your voice cracks a bit the second time, and you clear your throat like that is going to fix it, as if anyone can even hear you individually in this crowd anyway.

Branches brush against your arms as people wave them, leaves smacking into your shoulder, some falling and sticking to your clothes. Someone nearby has thrown their cloak down in the road, and you step on it without meaning to, then feel bad for about half a second before realizing there are about fifty cloaks already on the ground and you are not going to be able to avoid all of them. It is chaos, but the kind of chaos where everyone seems to agree it is the right kind.

And then you see Him.

Not the way you expected. Not the way anyone expected, if we are being honest.

A donkey.

Not a war horse. Not some grand entrance that makes people step back in awe. Just a donkey, walking steadily like this is a normal day and not the moment people have been waiting for. And Jesus sitting on it, close enough now that you can actually see His face, not distant, not elevated above everyone, just right there in the middle of it all.

“Rejoice greatly… behold, your king is coming to you… humble and mounted on a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9

You remember hearing that at some point, maybe in a synagogue, maybe half listening if we are being honest, and now here it is playing out in front of you in a way that feels both obvious and completely unexpected at the same time.

The shouting gets louder.

“Hosanna!”

You shout it again, louder this time, because now it feels real. Now it feels like something is about to happen. Like everything is about to change. Like maybe this is finally the moment where Rome is going to be dealt with, where everything wrong is going to be made right in a way that makes sense to you.

And if we are being honest, that part matters.

Because everyone there had an idea of what kind of king they wanted.

And this…this is not exactly it.

Still, hope is a powerful thing. It fills in gaps. It overlooks details. It says maybe this is just the beginning, maybe the war horse comes later, maybe the power shows up after the parade.

You lean forward a little, trying to see better, trying to catch another glimpse. Someone next to you is crying. Someone else is laughing. Someone behind you is yelling like they are trying to make sure Jesus personally hears them over everyone else, which is ambitious but also kind of relatable.

“The whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen.” Luke 19:37

That is what this feels like. Loud voices. Remembered miracles. Expectations stacked on expectations.

You can feel it building. You can feel it rising. You can feel how quickly this could turn into something unstoppable.

And that is what makes it hit.

Because this same crowd, this same energy, this same volume of voices is not that many days away from sounding very different.

Some of these voices will go quiet.
Some will disappear.
Some will change direction entirely when the King they wanted does not match the King they get.

And that is the part that lands a little too close to home.

Because it is easy to shout “Hosanna” when hope feels loud and everything looks like it is about to go your way. It is easy to praise when you think God is doing exactly what you expected Him to do.

It is harder to stay when He does not.

“Even the stones would cry out.” Luke 19:40

And here you are, dust in your mouth, branches in your hands, voice raised with everyone else, caught up in a moment that feels bigger than you can fully understand.

“Hosanna.”

The question is not whether you would have been there.

You would have.

The question is whether you would still be there…
when the donkey leads somewhere you did not expect.

(Yes, I am absolutely aware the photo is of a sword fern not palm branches. Being from western Washington, when I was a growing up my church had the children hold sword ferns and lay them at the front of the church for Palm Sunday.)

03/18/2026

There is a phrase we like to say a lot that sounds really good until you actually slow down long enough to think about what you are saying. We say we are the hands and feet of Christ, and it rolls off the tongue in this nice, encouraging, go be a good person kind of way. It sounds like smiling more, helping your neighbor, maybe not losing your patience in the grocery store line when someone is paying with exact change and counting pennies like it is a competitive sport. All good things, all very respectable, all very safe.

But that phrase does not come from a safe picture.

Because His hands and His feet were not comfortable. They were not well rested, moisturized, and living a balanced lifestyle with proper boundaries. They were pierced. They were nailed to a cross. They were stretched and torn and bleeding, holding the full weight of a body that was being crushed under something none of us could carry. Those hands healed people and then were nailed open. Those feet walked miles to reach the broken and then were pinned in place so He could not step away.

And those are the hands and feet we are told to be.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:27

That is not a polished calling. That is not a “once you get your life together, circle back and apply” kind of invitation. That is a right now, as you are, step into it kind of thing. Which is where most of us quietly start to back up a little bit, because if we are being honest, we do not feel like we qualify for that job description. We look at our own lives and see the cracks. The exhaustion. The moments we got it wrong. The things we wish we could redo. The places that still hurt. The parts that feel anything but strong or put together.

And we assume that disqualifies us.

We assume God is looking for people who are whole, not people who are still healing. We assume He wants clean lines and finished stories, not the messy middle where we are still trying to figure out what we are doing half the time and hoping no one notices.

Except that is not the pattern He gave us.

The hands and feet of Christ were not untouched. They were marked. They had holes in them. They carried visible evidence that something painful had happened there. And those same hands, the ones that were pierced, are the ones that still reached out. Those same feet, the ones that were nailed, are the ones that still carried Him exactly where He needed to go.

So maybe the point was never for us to show up flawless.

Maybe the point was to show up willing.

Because I look at my own life and I can see all the reasons I should probably not be the one representing anything important. I can see the impatience, the fatigue, the moments where my best effort was still…not great. I can see the holes. And I think a lot of us live right there, quietly believing that once we fix those things, once we get stronger, once we clean it all up, then maybe we will be useful.

And God is over here like I was using pierced hands.

I was using broken feet.

I was using a body that was literally in the middle of being crushed and still accomplishing the greatest act of love the world has ever seen.

So no, your brokenness is not a surprise to Him.

It is not a disqualification.

If anything, it is the exact place He has always worked from.

Because the truth is, we are not enough on our own. Not even close. We do not carry that kind of strength or wisdom or consistency. But somehow, when we belong to Him, when we are willing to step forward even with the cracks still showing, He uses us anyway.

Our hands that are not perfect still get to serve.

Our feet that get tired still get sent.

Our lives that feel unfinished still get woven into something bigger than we understand.

Not because we are whole.

But because He is.

And somehow, in a way that does not make sense until you really sit in it, that is enough.

03/07/2026

It's that time 😂😂

03/04/2026

"Sunday mornings, so help me, God!”
By Garrison Keillor

I seldom invite friends to come to church with me and, after Sunday’s morning service that was so deeply moving, I don’t know why.

If you knew a great bakery, you’d tell people. If you read a great book, you wouldn’t keep it a secret.

But off I truck to the West Side of Manhattan and in the big door past the greeters, drop my two cents in the offering plate, head altarward, stop at my pew, genuflect and bow, and take my seat.

The genuflection disturbs my fundamentalist ancestors.

I can hear them mutter, “Oh please, not that again.”

Genuflection they regard as Catholic, papist, alien to the pure faith, and my Anglican church they consider decaffeinated Catholicism, and though I love my ancestors, I tell them to shove off.

I know my own heart. This is my home.

I glance at the bulletin and see that I am going to weep this morning because Brother John the organist has chosen my mother’s favorite hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul,” for a Communion hymn.

John has brought up our congregation to be a singing congregation; he does this by playing softly and tenderly and relaxing the tempo.

Sometimes we sound rather magnificent.

Such as in the opening hymn, acolytes processing, candles in hand, the deacons and clergy, all of them women, and we sing “Trust and Obey” at full volume, even I who am neither trustworthy nor obedient.

We acknowledge God from whom no secrets are hid, we recite the Creed, and we acknowledge that we have opposed God’s will in our lives.

We are absolved and turn to the people around us, blessing them, and we go forward for Communion, and the Communion hymn reduces me to rubble:

Lord, lift me up, and let me stand
By faith on heaven’s tableland,
A higher plane than I have found.
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

My voice shakes and I feel tears on my cheeks, asking my Creator to raise me above the clutter and the cross-talk, the chit-chat, the crapola, and face the heavenly eternal, and accept the unbelievable fact of the faith, that God gave Himself to suffer humiliation and death for our sins.

We all do this together. It isn’t a show, we don’t come to admire somebody’s talent and wit, we are joined in one body for each other’s sustenance and inspiration.

The Gospel this morning is one I’ve heard a hundred times,

“Do unto others as you wish the bastards would do unto you,”

and this is no piece of cake.

It says: Love your enemy, bless those who curse you. If someone takes your coat, let them have your shirt too. Do not judge, do not condemn.

What the hell?

I do not love my enemy. He is Putin’s patsy and so we should let him take Ukraine and let him have Poland and Sweden too?

I don’t think so.

But this apparently is what Jesus said, that I should love the unelected N**i who is cutting American aid to starving people in Africa.

So I’ll take that home and wrestle with it for a while.

I have confessed my sins as a poor father, a distracted husband, an absentee citizen, and now I recognize my ignorance of the Golden Rule,

but then the organ sweeps us into

“It Is Well With My Soul”

and I weep openly while singing bass:

When peace like a river attendeth my way
And sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

And I see my mother, Grace, at the piano in the living room and her six children singing the words.

She canned dozens of quarts of stewed tomatoes, green beans, apple sauce, from the garden, and she fixed pot roast and she vacuumed and changed the beds, she laughed at my jokes, and she also played the piano. It’s her song.

I listen to the postlude and shake hands with the rector, thank John for the hymns: it’s not easy to make me weep, I am not that sort of sensitive male, I’m a comedian, this is the work that God has sent me out into the world to do, and I am grateful for the commission.

I walked into church thinking about deadlines and the news and my aged ailing pals and I walk out into the sunshine, feeling shaken, raised up, grateful for the love of God and the people around me.

I wish you’d come with me sometime.

(Thanks to Lindsay Hardin Freeman for this♥️)

03/04/2026

02/15/2026

Pancakes for Supper! See you on Tuesday!

02/04/2026

It's Pancake time!

01/19/2026

The 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming search process begins now. The Standing Committee has engaged with a consultant who will guide us through the search for our next bishop.

01/19/2026

The 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming search process begins now. The Standing Committee has engaged with a consultant who will guide us through the search for our next bishop.

01/16/2026

For St Andrew's its this Sunday!

It's that time of year again for many Episcopal parishes!