John 3:14-21 Now I know all the arguments for not equating darkness with ‘evil.’ I agree with them and I have carried my deep awareness with me as I write today. It’s just that these words from John speak of light and darkness, which I also understand as lightness and heaviness today. So forgive me …
Cleaning Out The Temple: Making Way For God To Do a New Thing
I Corinthians 1:18-25 John 2:13-22 This is surely one of those weeks when the lessons not only compliment one another, they deepen and expand our understanding of their meaning. For in the one we hear Jesus saying there is a new, another way, which will find its truest form in his death and resurrection. And …
Dying and Living with Arms Open Wide…
Mark 8:31-38 It’s a small memory, this one, and fleeting, to be sure. I remember it being when I was 6 or 7 when I would be playing with my sisters and neighborhood children in the side yard of our house on South 3rd Street. And this surely is a sign of our sheltered life …
God’s Presence In This Wilderness Now…
Mark 1:9-14 Many a February on the first Sunday in Lent, I have found myself speaking of ‘wilderness.’ And while there have certainly been other seasons which deepened my understanding of ‘untamed places’ and ‘wild beasts which threaten,’ I can think of no other season quite like this where the experience of ‘wilderness’ has been …
Light and Mystery and Jesus and Peter on the Mountaintop
Mark 9:2-9 Peter is so afraid that his first impulse is to start building things? Or is he so overwhelmed by what is before him that all he can think to do to try to regain some semblance of control is to keep busy? Or is actually a genuine impulse to be hospitable, or to …
Our Present Exile…
Isaiah 40:21-31 Perhaps it is coincidence, although I expect not. It never really is. For it is so that in these past days I have twice found myself attempting to bring the story and the experience of the Biblical Exile alive. First with our confirmation team to a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. …
Be Silent! … And Even the Unclean Spirits Were…
Mark 1:21-28 I am trying to imagine the scene before us now with Jesus fresh off his wilderness experience, still newly baptized by John, accompanied by a handful of his disciples, walking together into the synagogue in Capernaum today. Of course we do not hear the content of Jesus’ teaching in Mark’s telling of the …
For the Present Form of this World is Passing Away…
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Seldom have I ever been drawn to seriously and/or deeply consider Paul’s words as they come to us here in his first letter to the church at Corinth. For it appears, doesn’t it, that what he offers in these verses is not particularly helpful. Clearly, he expected that Jesus would return in …
Called by Name For This Time…
I Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20) John 1: 43-51 I was driving home from some time away this week-end. If you have ever headed north on Highway 65 through Alabama, perhaps you have seen it, too. It’s a billboard shouting the threat: “Go to church or the devil will get you!” The words are in bold black …
The Father’s Voice
Since I am still on vacation, I offer this old reflection now. What was eighteen years in the past is now almost twenty four. Perhaps it is mere coincidence that my sister unearthed an old video cartridge a few days back and after digitizing it so we could view it, discovered our dad’s voice, narrating …