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
Matthew 22: 1-14 (October 15, 2023) I mentioned last week that we were beginning a series of texts where Jesus is in confrontation with the religious authorities. Parables, we remember, were used by Jesus to “reveal what had been hidden since the foundations of the world.” Again, in today’s Gospel reading, we see Jesus directing
Matthew 21:33-46 (Sunday, October 8, 2023) I’ve rented more than one home in my life. For a period of time when I lived in Marietta, GA, I owned a condominium. But ever since I left Marietta for the northeast Georgia mountains, I’ve been living under someone else’s lease. The farmhouse that I rented in Demorest,
On Sunday, October 1, 2023, I became the interim minister of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bradenton, Florida. This is the first sermon I preached on that very same day to introduce myself and talk about how someone who prepared for academia was now in the pulpit. You can watch it on Facebook here. October 1,
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
For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds… Job 33:14-15 The fragmentation I see around us in American culture (and even beyond) is distressing. We’re split from each other societally,
In this video, I talk about the aspects that make up a good life well lived. I even gives shout-outs to The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, and the movie “The Village,” directed by M. Night Shyamalan. What does it mean to be truly human?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hebPiFk1E
In this video, I offer two original Christmas songs and a brief reading on this Christmas holiday, 2020.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWEgqhx7HcI
