Category Archives: lectionary reflection

Easter 2019: no idle tale

Posted on April 21, 2019 by

When the women returned from the empty tomb, they told the men all of this, and they thought that it was just another idle tale like so many others. How could they, even after all they had seen, fail to recognize that Jesus is like no other? But, to be fair, perhaps we too often treat the resurrection like a pretty myth that changes nothing much. Continue reading →

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Maundy Thursday: the end of love

Posted on April 18, 2019 by

Love is a decision. It is our choice to make, and we cannot make the excuse that someone else destroyed it, if Jesus washed Judas’ feet, and healed the ear of the servant sent to arrest him, and restrained the angels from coming down from heaven to frighten the hell out of Herod and that weasel, Pontius Pilate, letting love be his gospel, and his end. Continue reading →

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The stones would shout

Posted on April 10, 2019 by

If these walls could speak, they would sing of the sun’s light seeping into sandstone, warming the night when Love comes calling … Continue reading →

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Anointing

Posted on April 6, 2019 by

They say that scent is the closest sense to memory; I wouldn’t know, but Jesus, enveloped in the memory of myrrh – his mother Mary eked it out, birth by birth – his mortality laid out end to end, Jesus … Continue reading →

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Hungry for God

Posted on March 10, 2019 by

If we could turn stones into bread to feed the food insecure, the child whose father goes without to turn away her crying hunger, the mother who works night and day to provide for them; if we could turn beach sand into bread rolls, wouldn’t we do it? Continue reading →

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Bright cloud

Posted on March 3, 2019 by

There are those bright clouds in which we recognize God’s presence already among us, working in us and through us as we struggle to do the right thing, even when the way is obscure and foggy, even when we are terrified, even when we confronted with anger, grief, failure. The way of the cross is not an easy road, but it does lead to deliverance, to freedom from unclean spirits, eventually to resurrection. Continue reading →

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Mere mortals

Posted on February 17, 2019 by

Consider the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus offers: a world in which the poor have power; where the bereft are comforted. Where profits are harvested as food for the hungry, with ploughshares beaten out of pistols. Where the name Pulse has not been perverted to echo with death and anger, but resumes its resonance of life, and love. Where Aurora means the halo of light around the moon, giving glory to God with all the heavenly bodies, and we no longer ask, do you mean the one in Colorado, or the one in Illinois? Where the south side of Chicago is simply the sunny side of the street. Where the Tree of Life grows green in the Garden of Eden. A kingdom where the name Parkland conjures up, not the valley of the shadow of death, but a quiet place, green pastures beside still waters. Continue reading →

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