Wisdom is at the heart of today’s readings. Wisdom – the great teacher of humankind whose witness is present not only in the words of a teacher, but also in the ordered patterns of the universe and our planet – is often in conflict and contrasted to worldly values. We are challenged to align ourselves…
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus cures a deaf mute and arouses astonishment in the crowd. We Christians tend to think that the healing of people was the main goal in Jesus’ life. But after this Sunday there are only four more healings by Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. Why? Earlier (in the first seven chapters)…
The fornicators among us are surely disturbed by the words of Jesus today. So are the greedy among us. The same might be said for liars, adulterers, thieves, killers, the licentious, the envious, the arrogant. I contemplated scrapping talking about the Gospel today and thought about talking about love. Or how we need to give…
After seeing the second reading for today, I was tempted to preach exclusively on it. You see, while taking the General Ordination Examination to become a priest, the question that was posed to me about the canonical area of “The Holy Scriptures” instructed us to respond to the text of the second reading in an…
The letter to the Ephesians is written to a new, young church community that is trying to figure out how to live out their faith together. They are working to determine how to be distinctly different from the wider community around them, and to fit that into how they lived before they met Christ. They…
Come, come, come, all who are weary; Come, come, come you heavy laden; Take my yoke, for it is easy; Feel my burden rest ever so lightly. For I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest for your soul. I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest for your soul. Come,…
In today’s Gospel reading, we hear a conversation between Jesus and some people who had followed him across the Sea of Galilee. In the story, there is a reference to an important event in the history of the Jewish people, which we heard read earlier. After Jesus fed a crowd of 5,000 people, he crossed…
I can see the headlines in the newspapers, had there been newspapers in Jesus’ day. IT’S A MIRACLE!!! I can imagine seeing the stories filling my Facebook feed and the trending topic on Twitter: Jesus feeds 5,000 people and you’ll never guess what He does next #BreadMiracle #TheProphetHasCome Perhaps people begin to change their profile…
It’s July, and for many of us that means it’s vacation time. We can see this in our attendance trends, and it is totally due in part to the weather. The congregation is sparse because half of them are away doing what all of us would like to do in July – goofing off! But…
Who is missing from our table today? Today in Mark’s Gospel, we have a violent and gruesome story. I mean, King Herod (not the same King Herod we hear about in the birth narratives) asks for the head of John the Baptizer on a plate. But let’s set that story in the bigger picture —…
Our Hebrew scripture today begins with a plea to establish home. There is certainly a sense of the person connected to it being a defining aspect of the idea of home. But there is also this place — this home — that binds the family together. We hear the prophet Ezekiel describe these people as…
Today’s lectionary texts invite us to consider the universal need for healing. We need healing of our experience of loss, of our sense of moral failure, greed, brokenness of body, mind, spirit, and relationships. We need social transformation. Given the darkness of our time, we need to pray for personal, congregational, communal, national, and worldwide…
