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Category Archives: lectionary reflection
Christ, our true Mother
If Mother’s Day were a day to observe the commandments of Christ, our true Mother, to love God and to love one another as Christ has loved us, we would leave fewer orphans. Continue reading
One or the other
One says, Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; another, Thou shalt not covet the livestock. One says, Give as good as you get; another, Do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good. … Continue reading
Many dwelling places
There is more; there are many rooms, Jesus says, in God’s house: room for all of God’s children to roam and find their place. In God’s home and heart are many dwelling places, and sometimes we need more than one in a lifetime, if we are to grow and become the person God intended us to be. Continue reading
Many dwelling places
There was a hill covered in cloud that resisted the imprecations of the wind that tossed the crows about and hurried us to shelter beneath a bare crag, eroded by the dwelling of the centuries, bodies it had harbored, of … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged John 14:1-14, many mansions, Year A Easter 5
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Unhinged
I am a gate, I swing this way and that, inviting you to step into my dance, leading with the song you have heard before: creak and sigh of hungry humanity herded like sheep by fear and faith by turns. … Continue reading
The road to Emmaus
If the risen Christ stumbled through our doors, unexpected and unrecognized, visibly wounded in his head and his heart and his hands, how would we treat him? As a victim of our human violence, or as a threat? Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged Luke 24:13-35, Year A Easter 3
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Blessed
He breathed on them the scent of grave-clothes, myrrh, and aloes, the stench of forgiveness; I imagine that smells of olive oil pressed from the groves in the Garden of Gethsemane, drowning out with unction the fetor of betrayal and blood. All day long they shed … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged Easter 2, John 20:19-31
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Easter 2023: it’s (still) a love story
It isn’t like any love story we could conjure up, because it is true, a true story: Jesus lived among us, the Son of God was crucified, descended to the dead, and on the third day rose again, and he could not wait to greet his beloved disciples on the road, could not wait to see their shining, astonished faces; he could not wait to love them back. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged Easter, Jesus, love story, Resurrection
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Preaching from the shadows
The sound of mallet on metal
wood and splintered flesh
ricochets around the city walls
shivering the fabric of
the crowd that clothes the alleyways
too often lost in thought and prayers
we fall without an echo
into the open grave Continue reading
Afterwards
It was the following day that sealed it for him waking with the rooster an hour before dawn the darkness of the room unfamiliar tangled in bedsheets he shivered still straining his hope to conjure up that sun light and … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation, story
Tagged John 11, Lazarus, Year A Lent 5
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over the water 