Tag Archives: Jesus

How to love your enemies

Love your enemies, says Jesus. Let God take your anger and turn it into something beyond your imagining – just as Jesus turned the horror, the terror, the death of the cross into the astonishment of the Resurrection. Continue reading →

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mere mortals

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 →

Posted in gun violence, lectionary reflection, sermon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What the world needs now

“Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus, “From now on you will be catching people.” Simon, James, and John looked at the great crowd gathered on the sea shore to hear Jesus, to see Jesus, to find Jesus. And they put down their nets, and followed Jesus into the country, into the crowd, who needed more than anything to know the presence of the living God among them. Continue reading →

Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Water, wine, and justice like an ever-flowing stream

On sabbatical, I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I can’t begin to describe briefly the impact of walking that history of inhumanity and human dignity set up in opposition to one another, the weight of those ceilings, each one a century, and the heaviness of your footsteps as you climb closer to our own day of reckoning. Continue reading →

Posted in current events, holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon, story | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I heard it from an angel …

“I heard it from an angel, who heard it from a shepherd, who heard it from his sheep, who heard it from a donkey, who heard it from an ox that you had a baby tonight. Continue reading →

Posted in holy days, homily, story | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mary’s first Christmas

The first Christmas after he died, she spent the dawn remembering that night in Bethlehem, and the stars, and the straw. Continue reading →

Posted in advent meditations, story | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Good news, you brood of vipers!

“If you have two coats, give one to someone who has been left out in the cold,” offers John. It is almost literally the least we could do. Continue reading →

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

TLK W GOD

It is our calling to cry out the goodness of God in Christ; not as a way of advertising our own services, but for the sake of the gospel itself, because we know that life is better with God, that we are comforted by the Sacraments of Christ, and the communion of saints. Continue reading →

Posted in advent meditations, lectionary reflection, sermon | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salt and sabbatical

But that is the theology of Thomas the Tank Engine, who longs only to hear the Fat Controller call him “a useful little engine.” It is not the theology found in the Bible nor in the Word of God, Jesus the Christ, who celebrates the meek and the helpless, the poor in spirit and the hopeless, the errant and the outcast, the ungodlike. Continue reading →

Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The great and the good

And now Jesus was stuck on the floor with a sleeping baby, his hands full, his feet with no feeling left in them, and the child’s mother had gone back to work. There was nothing for it but to continue to wait on the baby, serving it with patience and with love. … Continue reading →

Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment