John the Baptist is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. He is strange, an outsider, and as such his invitation is away from the safe confines of the familiar. He does not go into the cities or villages to proclaim his message of repentance. Instead, he stays at the margins and invites all those who see the need for renewal to come out to him. It is from the wilderness that he makes way for the coming of the Kingdom, it is through a fast from the familiar that he prepares the people for the coming of the Messiah.
Read MoreOur sacred story begins not with the first but the second coming of Christ to a world in distress, to a people fainting from fear. It’s a strange place to start the story. But it is a profoundly hopeful place to start, especially for the anxious.
Read MoreWhat a powerful reorientation our scriptures offer us today. Whereas traditional kings are powerful because they are self-serving, wealthy in the things that are passing away, and in a complicated relationship of competition with God, Christ the King is powerful because he is the light of the world, because he is in right relationship with God, and because he brings about a realm of love and hope and abundance for all people. He does not rule over, he sacrifices for, lifts up, ushers in, dwells among.
Read MoreToday we celebrate All Saints. Over history it has become a time when we remember those we have lost, those we hope to see again in the Resurrection life of God’s renewal of all things. But that word saint refers to something more than simply the Christian dead. It is rooted in the word holy, connected to the words health and wholeness.
Read MoreA sermon for All Saints’ Day, for all those who need to see a bit of heaven shining through.
Read MoreIn the face of the endless depth of the divine, any and all work that we do to better understand God and ourselves, especially in faithful relationship with another person, is deeply sacred. It’s kingdom work. We can go around and around in circles trying to understand why we’re here, what to do with our lives, or what this week’s sermon should say, and we may never get any closer to the answer. But we will get closer to the Kingdom of God on earth, to the holy union God seeks to have with us.
Read MoreThings feel a bit rough out there. These days, there are fist fights on airplanes and at school board meetings. There’s a pandemic of a different sort happening, one that afflicts the human heart.
Read MoreThe passage we heard from Job this morning is only a fraction of God’s response. Verse after verse, God recounts the wild wonders of the world that are beyond Job’s knowledge, control, and benefit. From rain in the deserts where no people live to the speed of an Ostrich, cliff dwelling vultures to clods of clay, or my personal favorite, the wild donkey who “laughs at the clamor of the town”—we witness a montage of the created order from the celestial to the mundane, the animal to the atmospheric—all of it a manifestation of God’s creative and loving power. Like an Inuit elder quelling the anger of a child, God reorients Job’s sense of his place in the world with a vision of awe. And though the book of Job is considered by many to be among the most ancient literature in our scriptures, a work first performed as a drama, few books are as relevant to our time or as contemporary in their wisdom.
Read MoreWhen a good sheep like Ellen shows us the gospel, we, in turn, can do that for others. When that happens, whole flocks get pointed in the right direction, trusting that the grace of God is for them. Other sheep will have the opportunity to hear some good news, including that the good shepherd has a particular love for sheep who get lost
Read MoreOur ways of measuring worth are not how God’s system works at all. It’s as if we keep trying to thread our camels through a needle when it’s only grace that gets us through anyway. The young man’s camel was his wealth, which Jesus told him to give away. He would tell us the same thing about our own camels, to let them go.
Read MoreIn my experience, relationships that are based on score-keeping, on measuring tit for tat, relationships that are essentially transactional, are not very healthy. And what’s more, they aren’t the kind of relationships that God calls us into in order to reveal God’s love to the world. And as much as we resist taking a close look at Job and Jesus’ teaching on divorce, I believe that these two passages have much to teach us about relationships, both with other people and with God.
Read MoreThe world of earthly power has no room for children. Jesus knows this well, for his birth came when Ceasar demanded a census, a tool for taxes and building armies, and there was no room in the inn. The world that has no room for children is one that has no room for life. As Thomas Merton writes, “We live in the time of no room…The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.” This is a world that has no room for children and their play.
Read MoreAll roads lead to the foot of the cross, the place God expects to find us once we’ve outgrown our distractions and illusions of self-sufficiency. It’s the place God expects to find us when we need to know if there is hope for us and for the world around us. It’s the place where God answers yes. So Happy Fall Kick-Off Sunday, friends. We ask for God’s blessing as we begin a new season of learning and growing in the way of the cross. And we give thanks for all the roads that have led us to this place.
Read MoreSalvation will always be scandalous. If we seek to bring the Kingdom of God into the world, we will always run the risk of being offended by its breadth and its challenge. But we will also have a choice. We can turn away from what offends us, pushing it to the margins and showing partiality to wealth and ease. Or we can lean in and seek encounters with the people and places that scandalize us. Jesus shows us the faithful choice in today’s Gospel, if we are brave enough to follow where he leads.
Read MoreOur lives, from beginning to end, are part of a cosmic love story. The story that contains our lives is this: that God so loved the world that Christ came among us, stretched out his arms upon the cross, and drew us all to him, in love and reconciliation. That’s the gospel, the fundamental truth that shapes and gives meaning to all of our days. It’s especially helpful to remember that big picture when we find ourselves bogged down in difficult days.
Read MoreThe Gospel of John, of course, was written well before synthetic fertilizers and modern dwarf wheat. Most people lived, more or less, on a bread that was rich and nutritious, with grains grown from soils teaming with the microbes that sustain plant life. And yet, the difference between modern and ancient wheat offers us insight into the the bread of the ancestors and the living bread that Jesus gives. It is a difference of direction and relationship; fast food on the way to something else or a feast at which we linger.
Read MoreThis is the third week in the Bread of Life Discourse, and today the narrative takes a decisive turn. We still begin with Christ’s proclamation that he is the Bread of Life. But whereas before our instructions included seeing him, believing in him, and coming to him, now our instructions include eating the bread, which is his very flesh. Things just got real. As theologian and professor Robert Koch explains, in this portion of narrative, we move from metaphor to Eucharistic reality.
Read MoreJesus is the image of God and the image of the human being fully alive. If we want to see what human life can be, we look to Jesus; like a climber following the beta of someone who has already sent a route. The challenge is to discern what this imitation looks like, we have to take the beta and figure out how these moves will work for our bodies, our circumstances and lives. Jesus shows us what is possible, the pattern of ascent toward God, but much work is needed to make that a reality.
Read MoreThe bread of life metaphor is complicated and multifaceted and will definitely take more than one sermon to unpack. Luckily, the lectionary serves us bread for the next several weeks. But a good place to start is with what we learn today, from Jesus and from David. We learn what the bread of life is not.
Read MoreOurs is an improvisational God, working from a loose script, and since God invites our response, our freedom, the work of God’s mission is open and adaptive. There is a narrative God has in mind, one that involves the healing of the world, but God is ready to incorporate new offers, to accept our acts of freedom and work them into the whole.
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