“Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.…” (Rev 1:4) Welcome to Low Sunday, the nickname given to the Sunday after Easter. I’m not entirely sure if we nickname it Low Sunday because it’s the first Sunday after all the pomp and circumstance of Easter Sunday…
Today, we heard the Lucan version of the Resurrection story, but I wanted to also read to you today the Marcan version from chapter 16: When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the…
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the old game called Telephone, where you and a bunch of friends stand in a straight line, and then a person at one end whispers a message to the person next to them. That person whispers it to the next person, over and over until the message reaches the…
Today’s scriptural references are from the Common English Bible. Let me start today’s sermon by telling a quick joke: Knock-knock. [Who’s there?] Boo. [Boo who?] Don’t cry… It’s only a joke! Most of you stopped listening to the joke after I said “Boo” because you knew how it was going to end. (Badly, I might…
Do you hear them? The voices around Jesus. One December night in 1982 in Westland, Michigan, a man and his wife were driving home. Suddenly a fourteen-pound bowling ball crashed through the windshield, killing the man. Why? That question is almost irrepressible, isn’t it? When we face freak accidents or tragic illnesses, the question, “Why?”…
As you know, I took a long vacation to Hawai’i over the past few weeks. As I sat there, enjoying the sights and sounds that are so foreign to us here in Western New York, I began to think about the senses that God has blessed us with. It is only fitting that today’s Psalm…
To better understand the part of Joseph’s story in our first reading today, it would be helpful to read his whole story as recorded in Genesis chapters 37 and 39-50. These chapters present to us the inner character and personality of Joseph. Joseph’s dreams, indicating that his entire family will bow to him, put him…
I wanted to try something different this week and summarize the readings for you in just a few sentences for each reading: Jeremiah: Those who trust in human strength and turn away from God are cursed. They live without hope in barrenness. But those who trust in God are like trees planted near a river….
We sometimes think that one of the first things that Jesus did was to call the disciples. But as we heard in Luke 4:14, Jesus began to teach in the synagogues of Galilee before returning to Nazareth and the confrontation that happens which we have heard about the previous two weeks. Following this event, the…
One of the challenges of preaching on days where we have readings that are so well-known, like the one from 1 Corinthians today, is that people often already have an opinion and so they think they know the reading in and out. And so familiarity breeds a challenge. Virtually everyone loves these words we hear…
I wonder… I wonder, what was Jesus feeling as he read the scriptures that day in the synagogue? Was he anxious or afraid to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”? I wonder if he worried about what the people would think of him making such a claim. I wonder if…
Now THAT is a lot of wine! Between 120 and 180 gallons of wine. And you’ll notice that they were not earthenware containers typically used for holding wine, but rather stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification – the washing of hands and vessels. Let’s take a step back and look at the…
