Tag Archives: Jesus

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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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Love and death

It isn’t the approval of God that fills us with hope in the face of the unknown journey into life beyond death. It isn’t even the mercy of God that helps our souls to sing “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia” at the grave. Continue reading →

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Bathsheba goes to General Convention

Jesus was descended from a line of kings, from David. There’s no avoiding it. We hear him called the son of David, we know that he is of the house of David, and if we look back at the genealogies in Matthew and in Luke, whether they name him through the line of Solomon or of Nathan, David’s sons, they both seem to agree that when Jesus’ line descended from David, his foremother was Bathsheba. Continue reading →

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