Category Archives: sermon preparation

God head

Note: this week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry takes non-random words from the Gospel and pairs them to unearth (or undermine) the meaning of the exchange. These words appear in the NRSV translation. Continue reading

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Burned

This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry is informed not only by the Gospel and its parable of rejection, revenge, celebration, and their cycle, but inevitably by the images it calls up of contemporary violence, war, and burning cities; God save the innocents. After … Continue reading

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The witness

And in the dirt between the rows a single grape transfixed my pity, split, seed spilt on unforgiving earth, ragged skin torn from purple flesh; like a dog, I wanted to kneel down and lick the wine from its tender … Continue reading

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The tax collectors and the prostitutes enter a fancy hotel called The Kingdom of God

Please, I said, go ahead, sweeping open the door in a hurry so that I need not sully my hand with your grime; a false smile is no crime in the service of good manners and fine hygiene. You scurried through as though afraid that I might change … Continue reading

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The middle man

#preparingforSundaywithpoetry
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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

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No stray bullets

There are no stray bullets, just as there were no stray nails pounding themselves into the Cross. Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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