No leader, elected or kingly, and no human system, can be the focus of our trust. They all fail; they cannot heal us or bring us life or bring about the beloved community here on earth. Only God can do that. Jesus is Lord – not anyone else. Not the false shepherds that Jeremiah rails at, who destroy and scatter the sheep. Not the powers and rulers who crucified Jesus on the cross. No one but God is God. No power except God’s is true.
Read MoreWe start first with expressing our thanks – which serves to remind us of what God has done and is doing for us. When we start with thanking God, it’s like writing those thank you notes. We pause to remember that everything we have is not just a given – and neither is our life. What we have and what we are can’t be taken for granted. Even when we’re at our worst, or the situation around us is completely dire, we begin our prayers with thanks because there is always something to be thankful for – even if it is just that God is with us in the suffering.
Read MoreLots of answers to one strange question. But we might have a whole lot of other questions to ask about resurrection besides the one the Sadducees throw out. Jesus doesn’t go into detail about what resurrection looks like, you notice. He
Read MoreAll Saints is a feast day with a lot of room in it: it’s one where we remember all the saints named and unnamed of the church, and where we also know ourselves again to be part of the communion of saints past, present, and yet to come. This Sunday is for all of us.
Read MoreThat’s what’s at the core of the parable Jesus tells today in the gospel, the one about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Two extreme characters, one main point. It begins, Jesus told this parable ‘to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.’ Tell me that you don’t immediately have someone in mind when you hear that description.
Read MoreAnd yet it does strike a chord, somehow – because prayer is a practice that does sometimes feel like we’re pressing our case over and over again, and the response can definitely take a long time coming. In dark times, hope can feel hard to hold onto. All of us has been there – maybe even now.
Read MoreAll of this is meant to be good news. And it is good news, albeit sometimes terribly and frighteningly good news. God wants a relationship with us – all of us, our whole selves, every bit of us. And God wants us to fulfill a purpose – God’s purpose, God’s intention for our lives.
Read MoreWhen I lived in France, I often heard the proverb, ‘good accounts make good friends’ – the idea being that not having clear boundaries about money with your friends damages your friendship. And yet scripture, and maybe even this strange parable, seem to be saying that getting your money back is much less important than your friendship – much less important than your relationship and the well-being of the other person.
Read MoreSo this is a profound message for the church to claim: that here all of us, all of us sinners, whatever we think, whatever we’ve done, whoever we are, come together around the table, welcome to be with Jesus. I believe we must keep claiming this. We need this desperately.
Read MoreNot just classes and Bible study, but worship and song and fellowship and service, all form us and shape us, shape our faith and how we show our faith to others. And we learn not just with our heads, but in our hearts and lives. We learn something with our heads as we hear the scriptures and maybe the sermon, but we learn something in our hearts and in our bodies with the movement and music.
Read MoreHospitality is not an opportunity to show off your status or increase it to advantage; nor is it an opportunity to engage in quid pro quo. Hospitality is a time for intimacy, breaking bread together, seeing each other with different eyes. Not the carefully curated Facebook self, but the real self.
Read MoreThe story is a healing story. But it’s more than that. The woman is healed, and is able to stand and see and praise God. And that healing is offered to the whole congregation of people, all at once: stand up and see God’s power at work! But the leader of the synagogue, and all those around him who protest this action, are not healed. They are still crippled and bent, still unable to stand up and see.
Read MoreThese scriptures describe for us the life of faith, showing how to move forward in response to God’s call. Faith, says the letter to the Hebrews, requires both knowing our past and looking forward to our future. The ‘assurance of things hoped for’ is that knowledge that comes from recognizing that things we hoped for, prayed for, dreamed of, actually did come to pass. It means recognizing God in what has already happened. While ‘the conviction of things not seen’ looks ahead to what is not yet known, believing that things will come to pass as God promises, just as did things in the past.
Read MoreThe parable we heard today is about just that – realizing, perhaps too late, what’s important about life. And it’s about money, yet another story Jesus told that has to do with how we think about our material possessions.
Read MoreJust because people have been part of church all their lives doesn’t mean they pray, or know how to pray. And that seems to be the case with Jesus’ disciples, who ask him in today’s gospel, Teach us to pray. They’ve been watching him pray, but they don’t know what he’s doing, and they want to know more.
Read MoreThere’s an awful lot of hubbub and activity in our Old Testament and gospel readings today, a lot of bustling about in the kitchen. Abraham, in the story from Genesis, and Martha, in the story from Luke, both find themselves entertaining the Lord in their homes, and they hasten to do the right thing by him. But somehow, only one of them really seems to get it right.
Read MoreThe Good Samaritan is a parable that tells of a time someone helped. And the obvious moral of the story is, we should help too. But it’s also a parable of two people who didn’t help. And when you hear a parable, you know there’s always something more in it we’re meant to hear. So what exactly does this story have to tell us today?
Read MoreAny of us who have been parents have had to utter those sad but familiar words to our kids: Life isn’t fair, honey. Live long enough and it becomes clear that fortune is capricious and we’re never really in control of the outcomes. And yet we still cling to the idea that God will do it differently – it’s like we revert to being children in our hopes of assurance in a risky world.
Read MoreWherever Jesus goes, he heals people. Sometimes without even intending to, he heals people. God is healing, and Jesus is so transparent to God that healing flows out of him all the time. But that healing isn’t always welcome. People want the beggar to stay the beggar, for the dead to stay in the tomb, for clear rules about whose fault it is that sickness happens in the first place. But God’s order doesn’t look like our order. God has a better way for us to live. Yet sometimes we get so settled in dysfunction that we don’t really welcome that healing when it comes.
Read MoreReally, the Spirit comes blowing along to us in our lives all the time, in all kinds of ways. Maybe you feel it when you’re outside under trees. Or maybe when you hear a stirring piece of music, or when a conversation gets really good, when you’re really connecting. Maybe as you come here to worship you feel it, or in our Bible studies together when suddenly it all seems to spark. These are times when the Spirit comes to feed and nourish us, when we can drink deeply from the Spirit – to be followers of Jesus, disciples, students, learners at Jesus’ feet.
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