Maundy Thursday, March 28, 2024 – Mark 14: 17-31 Mark 14: 32-50 Also Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 When Jesus and his followers gathered the night before he was crucified, they weren’t just meeting up for a friendly meal. They were marking the feast of the Passover, the Jewish commemoration of their ancestors’ […]
Sunday, March 3, 2024 – John 2:13-22 Also Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 God’s Power on the Mountain On the third new moon after the Israelites had left Egypt, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. And God calls Moses up onto the mountain and tells him the words that he is to speak
Sunday, January 28, 2024 – Mark 1:21-28 A Problem of Language Today, I want to talk about healing. In our gospel text, we hear of a man healed by Jesus of an “unclean spirit.” Jesus clearly performs an exorcism of that demon. Now, I’ve heard tell of present-day exorcisms, and I’ve seen the movie, “The
Matthew 25: 31-46 (November 26, 2023) In 1975, a Marine on leave in Aiken, SC named Dannion Brinkley was on the phone with his best friend while a storm raged outside. As they spoke, a bolt of lightning struck the telephone pole, sending 180,000 volts of electricity burning through the phone line and the handset
Matthew 25: 14-30 (November 19, 2023) If there was one thing that stuck with me from my class in biblical Greek at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, it was the insight that biblical translation is an art and not a science. And even though I remember almost no Greek, I will never forget
Matthew 25: 1-13 (November 12, 2023) For thousands of years, humans have built spiral-shaped labyrinths. You may think that a labyrinth is just like a maze, but where a maze often has dead-end paths, labyrinths do not. The pathway of a labyrinth will always take you to the center, where Christ is symbolized. Medieval Christians
Matthew 5: 1-12 (November 5, 2023, All Saints Sunday) Matthew’s Focus We shouldn’t think of the Gospels as being like the transcript of a news reporter who was present at all of the events and recorded them just as they happened. Each Gospel was written for a particular community of followers of Jesus. They are
John 8: 31-36 (October 29, 2023) Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” Surprised, they said, “But we’re
Matthew 22: 15-22 (October 22, 2023) I watch a lot of animal rescue videos, especially from an organization called Hope for Paws. They’re always getting calls from people who report animals who’ve been stranded or abandoned. Often, the dog they’re rescuing feels cornered and may either be shaking with fright or snarling with aggression. What
I fear we’ve normalized the expectation that we have a right to never be offended. Human life – being a mixture of conscious and unconscious psyche and of emotionally intelligent and unintelligent people – affords us no such right. Life itself is offensive. It includes death. It includes flux. It includes predation. It also includes
