Remember and never forget!
Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3, Luke 2:22-32 (12/28/2014)
We are like a beautiful crown for the Lord …
Fear not!
Luke 2:1-11 (12/21/2014)
What is a shepherd’s greatest fear?
A shepherd’s greatest fear is that his sons and daughters will grow up to be shepherds …
Fear not!
Luke 1:26-33 (12/14/2014)
“Don’t be afraid, Mary.”
What are you afraid of?
You know, don’t you! Not what the people of Jerusalem were afraid of. They were afraid God had abandoned them. Not what Zechariah was afraid of. He was afraid God wasn’t paying attention. They were afraid because they didn’t think the Lord was with them, but Mary is afraid because the Lord is with her!
Fear not!
Luke 1:5-16 (12/7/2014)
Even as we pray for Jesus to come this Advent – into our own lives, into this world – are we afraid that he won’t come, or even if he does, that it won’t make any difference? Are we afraid that the tidings of great joy will fall on deaf ears and the declaration of peace on earth will remain an empty promise? Are our fears for this world, and for ourselves, hardening into resignation, hardening into despair, hardening into indifference?
Fear not!
John 15:12-15 (11/30/2014)
Fear is the context for justifying what Officer Wilson did and fear is the context for justifying whatever it takes to denounce what he did, fear bred from perception and from prejudice, from painful history and reasonable suspicion and unreasonable ignorance. Fear is the context for a society divided, a nation torn apart. Fear is the common denominator. Fear is the default.
πληρωμα
Ephesians 1:15-23 (11/23/2014)
So may we learn from the Jews how to pray and from the Orthodox how to stand in awe in God’s presence, from Catholics how to live as servants of Christ and from Presbyterians how to think as servants of Christ, from Lutherans how to rely utterly on God’s grace and from Methodists how to strive for nothing less than complete holiness, from Missionary Baptists how to praise God with our whole selves and from Pentecostals how to ask God for what we need, from Baptists how to say “yes” to God when God is calling and from Episcopalians how to revel in the beauty that comes from God and that is God.
For whether we live or whether we die
Psalm 90:1-12 (11/16/2014)
You are a dream, a daylily. Immortality is not your glory. Your glory is your mortality.
Finding your own way
Matthew 23:1-12 (11/2/2014)
Finding your own way is not going your own way. “Going” your own way means going wherever you choose to go! But “finding” your own way? Finding your way? Finding the way? The way is there, you just need to find it.
Feeling it
Matthew 22:34-40 (10/26/2014)
Don’t be afraid of feeling it! Expressing feelings, releasing emotions, is your gift of love, of yourself, to God, but it also may well be the occasion of God’s gift of love to you. It may provide an emotional catharsis, an inner cleansing, an inner healing, letting go of things deep inside that need to be let go.
got soul?
Matthew 22:15-22 (10/19/2014)
Are you striving for holiness, for nothing less than entire holiness, to be as Christ is? Inside and outside? In being and in doing? And, if not, why not? Were you made for anything less? Were you made for anything less?
Heart and mind
Philippians 4:1-9 (10/12/2014)
We need to learn to think clearly. We need to do Bible study. We need to be faithful students of the word so we can be faithful doers of the word.
Doesn’t that make sense? Or are we supposed to just make it up as we go along? Or just do it the way we’ve always done it because it is the way we’ve always done it?
By faith alone
Philippians 3:4-11 (10/5/2014)
But what if you didn’t hold tightly? What if you counted anything and everything you might once have considered precious as mere garbage? What if you threw it all away? What if you had nothing left to protect? What if you had nothing left to be jealous of?
Let us stand in awe
Luke 5:1-11 (9/28/2014)
Peter saw enough, enough to fall on his knees. Do you see enough?
Servants of a generous God
Matthew 20:1-16 (9/21/2014)
God is always more generous than we are, stretching and challenging the limits of our generosity, stretching and challenging the limits of our welcome, stretching and challenging and tearing down the limits we put on our love.
The God who does
Exodus 15:1-11 (9/14/2014)
But we are Jews, too. We worship the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel and Leah. We worship יהוה, the Lord, the Eternal One, the One who is beyond all praises and songs and adorations that we can utter. The same God who delivered the Israelites delivers us. The same God that saved them saves us.
Leaving jealousy behind
Romans 13:8-14 (9/7/2014)
This is not at all about depreciating the value of our own tradition or about changing our ways. We love who we are and how we are! But we are called, by Jesus, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Loving them, learning from them, will only enlarge us. And loving them will remind us, that as much as we do love our way of being church, it is one way, not THE way, and the most important thing about our way and theirs is where it is taking us – toward the unity in Christ, toward the oneness of all humanity and all creation, toward the shared intimacy with the living God, that God intends for us.
I am nobody
Exodus 3:1-15 (8/31/2014)
In the presence of the living God, I am nobody. But God is, and I am in God’s presence. In God’s presence … I am.
Getting there
Romans 12:1-6 (8/24/2014)
It would be easier, much easier, to stay put, to stay off the mountain, to remain comfortably snuggled up in front of the TV, listening to what everybody else is listening to, griping about what everybody else is griping about, wishing for what everybody else is wishing for, even dreaming, dreaming about a world that could be, a world where God’s will is done, here on earth as it is in heaven.
But you can’t get there by dreaming about it. Just do it! Take a step, even one step. A journey of a thousand steps begins with the first.
May the Lord spare you an untested faith
Genesis 22:1-14 (6/29/2014)
Should you expect that God will test you? Do you “want” to be tested, like Abraham? (Who could ever want to be tested like Abraham?!) Or would you rather that your faith, your simple and unquestioning trust in God, be left untried, unchallenged, untested?
Ishmael
Genesis 21:1-21 (6/22/2014)
We want straight answers to perplexing questions. We want to know which side to be on. We want to be sure that we are on the side of the good guys, and we want to be able to tell, without a doubt, the good guys from the bad guys.
But, let’s be honest. Can you do that? Is it that simple?
You have to go outside!
Genesis 1:1-2:4 (6/15/2014)
That’s what going outside teaches me, that I am puny! You are puny! Lebron James is puny. Warren Buffett is puny. Angelina Jolie is puny. Pope Francis is puny. But, at least, Pope Francis knows and admits that he is puny, and that is his glory. And that will be your glory, too, when you know, when you admit, that you are puny.
Comma
1 Peter 3:13-22 (5/25/2014)
But remember, extravagant welcome means everyone is welcome. It doesn’t mean anything goes. So if we open our arms to you and welcome you here and you do not change … you are still welcome here, no matter!
But if we open our arms again and again, if we welcome you back again and again, and you do not change … you are still welcome here, no matter!
But if we welcome you, if God welcomes you, and still you do not change … you are still welcome here. The welcome will never be retracted. The welcome will never be retracted, but what’s the welcome for?
Priests
1 Peter 2:4-10 (5/18/2014)
We want our welcome to be extravagant, and radical. It is radical because it goes entirely against the norm. The norm is: everybody excludes somebody.
And …
1 Peter 1:17-23 (5/4/2014)
We will die if we are content with merely holding on, preserving the traditions of our ancestors, guarding the faith we have inherited, doing our best to keep this institution as it is living and breathing for as long as we can. If we want to live, we have to listen to the God who is still speaking. If we want to live, we have to live, to be always changing, becoming, being transformed.
What’s next?
1 Peter 1:1-9 (4/27/2014)
They are like refugees, strangers in a strange land, disjoined from the world in which they live, but, let’s be clear! As Peter tells it, this is a disjunction, not of space, but of time. It’s not that they do not belong in this world, but that they don’t fit into this world … as it is.
On watch
Matthew 27:62-66 (4/20/2014)
Why are we so afraid of joy?
Go and tell
Matthew 28:1-10 (4/20/2014)
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of believing it. Don’t be afraid of joy. Jesus came to bring joy, to plant his own joy in us, so that our joy may be complete. Can he do it? He already has.
Traitors
Matthew 26:20-24 (4/13/2014)
It’s personal.
When we love something else more than Jesus, we betray him.
When we love our way more than his way, we betray him.
When we love what we have or what we want to have more than we love having him, we betray him.
When we love our own lives more than the life he gives us, we betray him.
Faithless servants
Matthew 24:36-51 (4/6/2014)
We are Christ in this world. When the people of this world look at us, what Christ do they see?
Vultures
Matthew 24:1-28 (3/30/2014)
If we are vultures, preying on people in pain, offering no better than black and white answers and easy scapegoats, instead of coming alongside them in their pain and bearing their suffering with them, how will they ever know of the God of love who sent Jesus to bear our pains and carry our sorrows?
Murderers
Matthew 23:29-39 (3/23/2014)
Instead, we build fine tombs, for Jesus … and we call them churches.
Hypocrites
Matthew 23:13-28 (3/16/2014)
If you know you are a hypocrite and if you admit you are a hypocrite, maybe you really aren’t a hypocrite.
Thieves
Matthew 21:12-17 (3/9/2014)
The gravest threat to God’s people is not what anyone else might do to us, but what we may fail to do for them.
Have you ever been in love?
Matthew 17:1-8 (3/2/2014)
Have you ever been in love … with Jesus?
Deus ibi est
Leviticus 19:9-18, Matthew 5:38-48 (2/23/2014)
The glory of the whole is the diversity of its parts, and the glory of each part is that it is part of the whole.
Sticks and stones
Matthew 5:21-24 (2/16/2014)
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words …” Words may cause an injury that no orthopedist or surgeon can mend. Words may leave a festering wound that never heals, deep scars that persist for a lifetime. Words may cause mortal harm to an individual man or woman or child, or even to entire classes of people.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.” It’s a lie.
Your kingdom come
Isaiah 58:1-9 (2/9/2014)
I need you to help me. We need to help each other. How can we make that change in mindset from thinking of ourselves as dispensers of charity to thinking of ourselves as people in solidarity with the poor? From thinking of others as objects of our pity to thinking of others as “one with ourselves?”
Via pulchritudinis
Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 5:1-9 (2/2/2014)
“… remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other.”
A dangerous God
Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-17 (1/26/2014)
Eighty-five people, eighty-five people living in this world right now personally own as much as the bottom three and a half billion people living on this planet right now, combined.
Does it matter?
Open the doors!
Isaiah 49:1-6, John 1:29-42 (1/19/2014)
We are bearers of light, witnesses not crusaders. We have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, the good news of a gracious God who has come to us, to all of us, in Jesus Christ. “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Our job, our greater task, is to open the doors of our churches and our hearts, so that all may come in and find that treasure.
My own dear son
Matthew 3:13-17 (1/12/2014)
It’s about joy! The end result of a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ is joy! This is Francis’ deep desire, his reason for writing, his agenda for the church. He wants the men and women and children of Christ’s church to be filled with joy and to carry that joy into the world!
What is your name?
John 1:1-18 (1/5/2014)
Language is a uniquely human capacity … or shouldn’t we say, if God is word and the word is God, that language is a divine capacity and that language is the image of God in us? God speaks the worlds into being. God speaks us into being and names us, and puts in us the same capacity to speak and to name.