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Category Archives: lectionary reflection
Where your treasure is
This upcoming Sunday’s Gospel reading includes Jesus’ aphorism: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34 and parallels). Last week, looking for something I have already forgotten, I found at the back of my bedside drawer the name tag of my grandmother’s dog, which I have apparently and largely unknowingly kept for some forty years; hence this poem. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation, spiritual autobiography
Tagged Luke 12:34, Matthew 6:21, treasure
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Bonsai, barns, and building a legacy
I had not realized that such a wide variety of trees could be made into bonsai. Perhaps my favourite was the olive grove, a miniature version of the scene that greets visitors to the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. Some of the bonsai were relatively young; others were hundreds of years old. I got to thinking about the generations of trainers and nurturers who had tended those trees – how many hands must they have passed through? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged #GunstoGardens, bonsai, Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, inheritance, legacy, Luke 12:13-21, wills
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The sin of Sodom
It reads like a folktale, and as such it has taken on a resonance that permeates our culture. When we think of Sodom, we think of sin. But when we think of the sin of Sodom, we often get it quite wrong. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged climate crisis, Sodom and Gomorrah
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At the intersection, revisited
Listening to this morning’s Gospel of the parable of the Good Samaritan, envisioning the steep and scary road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, I was moved to revisit also the intersection referenced in yesterday’s prayer poem, to seek hope in the mercy that Jesus related. Where is our mercy? Where is our hope? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, story
Tagged Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37, Year C Proper 10
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Peace, and if not peace, then protest
If we feel as though defeat is always at hand, may it be a reminder of the cross of Christ, and be turned to our hope. If we feel as though the world is at war with itself, with us; if we think the world we thought we knew is strange and full of wolves, may it be a reminder of our own status as lost sheep, dependent on the love of our shepherd to find us and bring us home. If we feel as though peace has dissolved into protest, may we lift up our feet and find ourselves on the way of the Cross. Continue reading
Among the living and the dead
When the demons saw Jesus, they were afraid. They begged for their lives. When Jesus showed mercy even to the demons, they proved their destructive nature by plunging the herd of swine into the sea. Did he not know it must be so? It was their nature to be evil spirits. It was, it is Jesus’ nature to be love. Continue reading
Tabitha’s companions struggle “to assert her dignity and worth as a human being”
The women had come together to wash Tabitha’s body and commiserate, because there are always those spaces in time and culture where those who bear the title or burdens of womanhood need to come together for mutual support, encouragement, wisdom, laughter, and tears.
This may be one of those spaces in our time and culture. Continue reading
No exceptions
What are we afraid of? Expanding our understanding of what it is to be human? Jesus has already stretched it beyond our imagining, being both human and divine, mortal and resurrected, all at once. Continue reading
Good Friday
The cross does not narrow down God’s love for the world. It raises up God’s love so that all might see the compassion, the deep and abiding compassion, of God for God’s people, that God would even suffer with us in order to redeem us from our suffering and sin. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Good Friday, Passion Gospel, solemn collects
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Sleep, prayer, grief, and Jesus
Jesus knew that he would conquer death and sin – he had told them over and again that he would rise – but he was grieved and frightened and anguished at the capacity of his human captors for violence. There is no contradiction here: it was from ourselves that he came to save us. That is why he advises his disciples, “Pray that you may not be tested.” Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged gethsemane, Holy Week, Jesus, Palm Sunday, Passion Gospel, prayer, Ukraine
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over the water 