Christmas 2007
Was it the shepherds who were blessed by an announcement from a choir of angels or was the choir of angels blessed by the shepherds because it was only shepherds who heeded their song? To how many other fields on this earth did the angels travel? Did knowing so well of their own pain and emptiness help the shepherds overcome their pride so that they were responsive to the angels’ news? Do the shepherds represent people who have so little to lose and protect that they become especially open to expressions of God’s grace among us? Does the icy covering of our cynicism and mistrust need to melt before we can get up and go to Bethlehem?
Sunday, 9 December 2007
John the Baptist is the special saint of the sadly neglected season of advent. Like the season of advent itself, John doesn’t quite fit into our busy and self-assured society today and so he is often ignored or quickly passed over. He is clearly out of sync with much of the so-called holiday spirit around us.
Sunday, 2 December 2007
Advent, in effect, is an optimistic season. It sees the future as an opportunity for human redemption and an opening in the dull, discouraging routine. It leads us away from simply mourning the past, of harboring jealousy and envy in the present, and fearing or trying to deny the future. People of Advent faith are “keep your fork people.”
Sunday, 25 November 2007
The lessons and collect for this last Sunday before Advent, revolve around the theme of God’s constant presence in the swirl and undertow of history. Despite the turmoil that afflicts the world, there is the affirmation that God will save and restore humanity.
Sunday, 18 November 2007
The future that is encompassed in God’s new earth is described in terms of song, not cries of vengeance, of joy not punishment, of dependable water and plentiful food for everyone as opposed to periodic thirst and inevitable want. Building is emphasized as opposed to loss and theft. The future talks about reconciliation, and understanding, not dissention and unrest.
Sunday, 11 November
Jesus refuses to take the bait over trivial and petty debates of limited value, and enter into a spurious argument or offer a contrived explanation. Instead Jesus lifts up what the life of faith is all about. God is God of the living. How we treat others is really what we have to be concerned about. Indeed when we treat others with respect and dignity, then we have a foretaste of what God has planned for us.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
The world can be very capricious with our reputation. We may be quickly forgotten or long remembered. The world's historical record may be accurate or become distorted beyond recovery. In the hands of God, though, there is a lasting relationship of the living and dead; we are not forgotten, but are part of one body, seen and unseen.
Sunday, 28 October 2007
Scripture is very hard on those who confide strictly in their own strength. That is why when ancient Israel was about to enter the promised land, the people were solemnly warned never to claim that they had received the land solely by their own power or merit, but to remember it was because of the promises of God. They were never to forget the gifts with which God bestowed upon them or they would perish like other nations before them.
Sunday, 21 October 2007
The individual people in the Bible are rarely mere individuals. They are also symbols for entire nations and communities. Jacob is that community of faith who, like us, often has a history of questionable virtue and with lamentable limitations, but is continually called by God to be something else, something much more. As a result of staying, facing his past, and wrestling over his life at the ford of Jabbok, Jacob changed from a cheat into an instrument of blessing.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
Usually the story of the lepers is used as a springboard to say something about gratitude. Only one leper out of the ten who were healed, came back to give thanks, and that one leper was a Samaritan. But maybe at another level, the encounter is a revelation about new life in the risen Christ.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Near the beginning of the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus teaching his disciples about forgiveness. Characteristically, the disciples, like us, want to know what the boundaries are and are very concerned about how many times they are called to forgive someone. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells the parable of the debtor who was forgiven a large debt, but who then in turn went out and refused to forgive someone who owed him a very small sum. The parable contrasted God’s grand vision of forgiveness with our pitiful narrow view.
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Societies too can become a lot like the rich man. Stainless steel and glass skyscrapers and bright shopping malls with exotic gardens often cover up real misery lying in the shadows. Societies can become insensitive, complacent, and arrogant, and like the rich man, can be unaware of how vulnerable and precarious they really are. The pain of people is a warning sign of something not right. Ignoring the warning signs ultimately courts serious consequences, even fatal ones, in one way or another.
Sunday, 23 September 2007
People of faith are often called to provide balance and to get on the seesaw of a society that usually is wildly out of balance. Sometimes we need to get on one end of the seesaw, or in the middle. People of faith may well be called to say things the world would prefer to deny.
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Discipleship leads to a life that the world neither can conceive of nor promise. Jesus warns us never to worship and be consumed by idols. The idols of our own heart often conspire with the world’s idols, demanding that we conform to them. They become very angry when we hear the voice of Jesus to refuse.
Sunday 2 September 2007
This is Labor Day weekend. First proposed in 1882, Labor Day has marked the sometimes violent struggle for the recognition of the dignity of labor. The debate about fair wages, working conditions, and how we as a society value labor and workers is still ongoing. We read in the news about the greed and dishonesty of certain of the rich and powerful consistently every day. For people of faith, a moral society demands we care about the safety and wellbeing of workers, and are not afraid to ask questions about the products we buy and services we purchase.
Sunday, 26 August 2007
The question Jesus poses to the synagogue congregation is not “have you pleased the Jerusalem authorities, or have you followed all the rules, or is your paperwork in order,” but “what kind of witness have you been”. What kind of witness do you wish to be? That is the question for us at St. John’s as we take leave of some people and welcome others. We are known as the parish that feeds the hungry. How does that translate for us? If and when the hungry come, what will they find?
Sunday, 29 July 2007
It is easy to be very pessimistic and disillusioned with humanity. Contrary to the assumptions in today’s Gospel, the world too often gives our children scorpions instead of fish and rocks instead of loaves of bread. A thoughtful examination of the news leaves no other conclusion. Economically, socially, and morally there is a definite crisis developing and I suspect the general tenor of many people in our land, while perhaps not able to openly articulate it, senses an uneasy foreboding, as in a change of wind and distant clouds before a terrible thunderstorm. Like Abraham and Sarah, people of faith live and pray in the face of widening incongruity between what they see and the world that they pray for.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Jesus is not like a pushy and ignorant shoe salesman with a one-size-fits-all philosophy, anxious just to make a sale. This is why it is dangerous to use the Bible simplistically as a great big answer book for all of our problems or a dictionary of solutions to the real dilemmas of others. It is easy to delude ourselves and pick out the so-called answer we want, rather than to take the effort and allow the struggle to suggest where the Gospel may be leading us and what others may be telling us.
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Jesus was well aware that life could be dangerous, like the notorious Jericho road itself. Jesus knew well that there are thieves and wolves disguised as sheep. Nonetheless, we don't have to be heroes to take initiative. Opportunities do not need to be sought from beyond the sea, nor brought down from the sky in super feats of courage and moral strength. Faith is often simple commitment to life in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. There are many reasons why we don't make all sorts of commitments. Again, people of faith are simply people of faith.
Sunday, 8 July 2007
What God asks of all nations is not how large are your granaries or how wide your sphere of influence, but how do you treat the refugees, the orphans, the strangers in your land. How are they and the many refugees of innumerable internal battles and disagreements, included? Do they ever experience joy too? An unmistakable and consistent theme in the Bible is God holding people and nations responsible for their treatment of others, not the extent of their power over the earth.
Sunday, 1 July 1007
The theme of both the first lesson and the Gospel is that we cannot move on in life until we acknowledge the significant changes in our lives and recognize that in some way we grow into different people. In the first lesson it is made clear that Elisha is no longer going spend most of his time plowing the fields. Being groomed to be Elijah’s successor will completely transform his life. The destruction of the wooden yokes for the plow and the giant ox roast for all his neighbors are all about the recognition that he will never be able to return to the past and that it is right to celebrate his future.
Sunday, 24 June 2007
All three lessons today have a common theme that inform us about baptism, for they all, in some way, remind us that discipleship and being a member of a Christian community are sometimes difficult work.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Jesus was well aware that life could be dangerous. He knew well that there are thieves and wolves disguised as sheep. Nonetheless, we don't have to be heroes to take initiative and show the light rays of good news. Opportunities do not need to be sought from beyond the sea, nor brought down from the sky in super feats of courage and moral strength. Faith is often simple commitment to life in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. Jesus says go and do; choose to be on the side of life. People of faith are people of faith.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
The prophets made an important contribution to faith by expanding the understanding of God’s intentions and emphasizing that widows, orphans and even foreigners are included in God’s design and deserve justice and honest dealing. Israel was reminded that its mission entailed bringing all the nations into a relationship with God. When people described Jesus as a prophet it was tacit recognition that Jesus taught his disciples in the tradition of the prophets like Elijah.
Sunday, 3 June 2007
In one sense the concept of the Trinity is like a comprehensive insurance policy that reminds us of the depth, breadth, and inexhaustible strength of the Biblical witness to the acts of God. It reminds us that while people of faith may make distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, these distinct realities are related to each other, for they are also one. The Gospel does not introduce additional gods. We are protected against a jealousy of the Son over the Father, or the Son over the Holy Spirit. We know that Jesus loved God the Father, prayed to God the father, and that the Father loved the son. We know that Jesus promised us the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, 27 May 2007
The Book of Acts records that when the earliest Christians gathered for the Day of the Pentecost festival after the first Easter, they became empowered to communicate the Gospel to cultures other than their own. The first Christians learned that the Gospel was not only intended to be meaningful to them who had roots in Jewish culture, but was truly good news for people everywhere. In some inexplicable way the early Christians discovered that Jesus spoke everyone’s language, near and far.
Sunday, 20 May 2007
The Acts of the Apostles was written as the continuation of the Gospel of Luke, and was intended to show that people of all social classes and religious backgrounds were attracted to and welcomed into the new Christian community. In the parallel stories about the slave girl and Paul, and Paul and the jailor there is a poignant contrast between power and powerlessness in the world, and between secular power and the power of the Gospel.
Sunday, 13 May 2007
We are fortunate that the complier of the books of Luke and Acts realized the story of Paul and the vision that led him to Macedonia was such a good example of how doors of the Gospel swung open and created wonderful new opportunities. The journey that would take Paul and his companions to the city of Philippi would eventually set in motion the spread of the Gospel westward into Europe.
Sunday, 6 May 2007
The stories after the resurrection involve transition not reminiscence. The disciples became aware of broader responsibilities and larger horizons implicit in the Gospel. It was an unsettling time as well as a joyous one. Visions of a new heaven and a new earth will do that. Yet at the same time, while the disciples knew that they would never be the same people as before, they found that they were more grounded, more rooted into a larger and deeper reality than they ever knew existed. The journey forward was also a journey inward and into a deeper center.
Sunday, 19 April 2007
These Christians were not nomadic tribes, but were established somewhere within the larger Roman Empire. They couldn't run away from the threat of persecution, and they knew of no force on the horizon that promised deliverance. Yet they took the image of the lamb, an ancient symbol of nomadic life, redefined it to reflect the living Christ, and fashioned a great drama. Bowls, trumpets, and lamp stands were some of the props. The elders and creatures made up the choruses.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
The question for Easter people is what type of leadership is Christian discipleship? Where do the examples of Jesus on the lakeshore, on the road to Emmaus, or in the upper room take us? Jesus’ appearances seem to suggest that one needs to reconsider the assumption that God is confined only to a separate holy ground.
Sunday, 15 April 2007
Jesus sends us out of this place every week of the year, to bind up, to reconcile, and to heal. We are given God’s peace to pass and we are all aware that we are free to neglect God’s call to bind-up, we are free to fail to share the gifts God gives us, and to refuse to participate in God’s mission. We are given God’s love as a gift, but we are never given God’s absolute truth to brandish as a weapon, or a divine certainty to use as a straightjacket on others. People who use such shackles are never sent as God sent Jesus, and as Jesus sends us. God’s grace is never, never to be forced fed. Nothing destroys the Good News of the Gospel as quickly and totally as attempts to impose it by threats, however subtle they may be.
Easter Sunday, 8 April 2007
The resurrection opened such a wide door of hope that the writers of the Gospel accounts did not know how to end the story, for whenever they seemed to have come near to a conclusion, a period was replaced with a semicolon. Wait, there’s more, much, much more, the Gospel writers hasten to add.
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Oh yes, like many in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, we acquiesce to power too easily and often lack the courage to stand up to the claims of those who set themselves up as gods of ultimate judgment in the place of the one true God. In too many instances, we stand by rather than standing up. We remain silent rather than acclaiming the truth.
Sunday, 25 March 2007
As the ancient biblical prophets would remind us, God is more offended by the injustice of what is happening to thousands of people who used to live in the 7th and 9th wards than with the revelers in the few blocks of the French Quarter. What is not happening in the 7th and 9th wards is so much more important than the latest report on Brittany Spears, yet the secular world seems to have missed the point entirely.
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Now it is somewhat ironic that the titles we have traditionally tagged on these parables are negative. We call them the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal or lost son. Yet they are clearly parables about a found sheep, a found coin, and a found son. What ties these parables together is the shepherd, the widow, or the father who is concerned to find and is persistent in searching for the lost, and when the lost is found, heartily rejoices.
Sunday 11 March 2007
In one sense the tension between the announcement of grace and the warning of judgment can be pictured as a cosmic game of musical chairs. When the music stops, some of us find chairs and some of us do not. Those who are left standing on the edges need to hear of God’s forbearance, of God’s desire that alienation and lostness be changed into incorporation and reconciliation. And those who for the moment are sitting down need to be forewarned not to take their position for granted and become satisfied and complacent.
Sunday, 25 February
To take the humanity of Jesus seriously, we have to take Jesus’ temptations as real, strong temptations and that the devil did not give up easily. However the question of the integrity of Jesus’ inner turmoil is not the thrust of this particular passage. The account of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry parallels the forty years the people of Israel spent in the desert after they had been freed as slaves in Egypt, given the ten commandments, and before they entered a promised homeland of their own.
Sunday, 18 February
There are both similarities and contrasts between the view on the mountain of transfiguration and the mountain of temptation. Both offer a high, exalted view, both offer more than what one can gain from the ground. In contrast however the atmosphere on the mountain of temptation can be deceptively clear. There are no clouds.
Sunday, 11 February 2007
The Sermon on the Mount is not based on hard scientific facts derived from research in the laboratory. It is, however, a guide of how research may be used to benefit all humanity rather to enslave or increase the misery of the powerless. The Sermon on the Mount is about the values of how we use our skills, intellect, and gifts.
Sunday, 4 February 2007
Jesus did not say to the disciples, “I am going to take you away from your ordinary tasks and have you concentrate on more important divine business.” Nor did Jesus promise a life of moving up through the ranks of respectability and prestige. Rather, Jesus says, in effect, I want you to be my partners, I want you to work with me from this day forward, to pull humanity out of the clutches of degradation and death.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Too often our prayers fall into complaining or blaming God for what God has presumably let happen. We want to play over and over again the same old why, why, why song. Or, our prayers involve giving God instructions about what we think should occur. God answers by asking the same question asked the universal first man and woman who became estranged and lost in the garden. God didn’t say where have you been, but where are you. Where are you? Where are you now?
Sunday, 21 January 2007
Giving people a larger perspective, inviting broader, if not universal horizons, is precisely what Jesus did and what got him into controversy and why there were powerful forces that turned against him and sought his elimination.
Sunday, 14 January 2007
John’s Gospel is highly symbolic and was never intended to be what we would think of as an historical biography. It is a fair to wonder how did John know what was said between Mary and Jesus. Perhaps the enigmatic dialogue between them is meant to reflect both Mary’s confidence that Jesus was indeed a very special person and much more than he appeared, as well as Jesus’ own reluctance to perform signs or miracles on demand. Jesus knew full well that people who become addicted to signs and miracles do not mature in faith.
Sunday, 7 January 2007
The church season of advent often seems to drag even in the midst of hectic preparations for Christmas. Then when Christmas arrives at last, the following week through New Years seems to wiz by. We still would desire another week to rest partly because of fatigue and partly because we experience a let down and low grade depression after all the build up. The church calendar quickly moves on, with Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi from far off lands.