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Category Archives: lectionary reflection
Quality and quantity
This discourse about the community of mercy is exposed, laid bare, solved by Jesus’ unmathematical formula. Seven, the perfect number of creation, used biblically to represent what is holy, is itself multiplied until we no longer know even what the number is supposed to be. Seven, the number that crowns creation with sabbath, with rest, is multiplied toward the peace of God that passes understanding.
It is not the quantity of forgiveness that is in question, then, but the quality. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged forgiveness, gun violence, Matthew 18:21-35, racism, repentance, seventy times seven, Year A Proper 19
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Seventy times seven
How many hurts accumulate like straws under a camel’s nose before it sneezes, before the involuntary blast of anger, grief, ugliness propels one’s inside out, clutches at the throat like stone eggs, tears a slow, impassible river floating faded, sodden … Continue reading
No stray bullets
There are no stray bullets, just as there were no stray nails pounding themselves into the Cross. Continue reading
Our hope is in Jesus
We are a house full of sinners. We are hurt and hurting, hurt-full people.
So when Matthew describes how the church is to be, in matters of discipline, order, and offence, it is no surprise that he anticipates that it will not always be easy to repair the breach. But it is telling, I think, that he ends with this promise from Jesus, that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is with us. Continue reading
Two or three
Two or three: Jesus why are you afraid to be too alone with me? ______________ #preparingforSundaywithpoetry. This Sunday’s Gospel is full of numbers – no, not of numbers, of people, unalone. Matthew 18:15-20
Who I am
It’s strange that Jesus tells Peter that his mind is stuck on human things rather than the divine. In some ways, it seems as though the opposite applies: Peter is looking for a miracle, a theophany, a deus ex machina to usher in the Messianic age; he doesn’t want Jesus to take the very human road of suffering in body and in spirit that is the symptom of our mortality. Peter wants to skip straight to heaven. Continue reading
Savour
This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry perhaps bears more relation to the stories of Jesus’ original temptation than to his twin command to Peter to, “Get behind me, Satan!” But between those threads, and the idea that one could follow Jesus, taking up … Continue reading
Who do you say that I am?
It is an apt place for new beginnings. Named and renamed, with Simon Peter’s words the Baals, the gods of Pan and of Rome, the idolatry of empire, all were buried beneath the cataracts, and the name of the living God was spoken over the water, like a baptism. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Banias, church, Confession of Christ, names, naming
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On forgiveness
Let me ask it plainly: Would Joseph have forgiven his brothers so completely if they had not been completely beholden to him? Would he have been so magnanimous if he were not dressed in magnificent robes? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged forgiveness, Genesis 45:1-15, Joseph, Matthew 15:10-28, Romans 11:29-32, Year A Proper 15
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First and last
Do you remember how,in the parable, he paid them, last and first?To the first he was fair, but to the last he was magnificent. Neither knew whether to laugh or shout or fall to their knees; so we, too, swayed between the thirsty and the relieved, envying and blaming each in … Continue reading
over the water 