Revelation 21:1-6 ; John 13:31-35 I came across a news story last week about a woman who was found living in a car in the Target parking lot. You might wonder if that’s really even news. There are so many homeless people in our country, so many of them living in cars – and some of these may not even consider themselves homeless because at least they are not sleeping in the bushes. At least they have a car and the car is their home. Yet we know it is a far from adequate home. It was reported in the local newspaper, where it was considered to be newsworthy. Perhaps because it happened in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. King of Prussia is a fairly affluent suburban community outside Philadelphia. It has a very low rate of poverty. Life is generally pretty good. The shopping is excellent – King of Prussia is […]
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Radical Trust
John 10:22-30 In the movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze plays a man who is murdered. I’m not giving away the plot. That’s just the set up. The story is about how his spirit lingers on earth, because he needs to communicate a message to his wife, Demi Moore, who is in danger of being killed, too. He needs to figure out how to communicate with living people, so he goes to a psychic – Whoopi Goldberg. She’s actually a fake psychic. She has never communicated with the dead in her life; she just puts on a show and the people who pay for her services believe her. So when the ghost of Patrick Swayze walks in the room she practically jumps out of her skin. Because she can see him and hear him. She never knew she really could communicate with spirits. Now that she does, she’s not at all sure she […]
Continue readingGrace and Peace
John 21:1-19 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the greeting Paul liked to use in his letters to the churches with whom he corresponded. In these weeks since Easter Sunday I have been thinking about the kinds of feelings the disciples of Jesus might have experienced after his resurrection. As I said last week, fear was among those feelings, possibly even fear of the resurrected Jesus. But also guilt. They had failed Jesus spectacularly. They let him die. Not that they could have prevented it, of course. In fact, they had tried on various occasions to stop him from going down the path he was going. He would not be stopped. There wasn’t anything much they could do, short of dying with him. They weren’t personally responsible for his death. But that didn’t mean they weren’t feeling personally responsible. Perhaps […]
Continue readingBreath of Life
John 20:19-31 Do you remember that ad campaign from about twenty years ago? Somebody started taking out billboard ads that were meant to look like messages from God. They were usually kind of funny. One of them said, “Well, you did ask for a sign.” Some were cute and encouraging, like “Come on over, and bring the kids.” Or “Let’s meet at my house Sunday, before the game.” Or “Loved the wedding; invite me to the marriage.” Some were a little more ominous, although still funny, like, “You think it’s hot here?” “What part of ‘Thou shalt not’ didn’t you understand?” My favorite has always been, “Don’t make me come down there.” I love that one because, well, it reminds me of my parents. And yes, I have probably said it, or something like it, myself at some point in all my years of parenting. I love it for those […]
Continue readingWhat the Lord Needs
Luke 19:28-40 As Jesus and his disciples are getting ready to enter Jerusalem, they are taking care of some of the details – as anyone would do before a parade. They pause some distance before reaching Jerusalem, near Bethany and Bethphage. Here, Jesus turns to two of his disciples to give them instructions. “Go ahead into the village. You will find a colt tied up. Untie it and bring it here.” And here you might be asking yourself: Is this really okay? That they should just go in and take a colt that clearly belongs to someone else? Might someone object to this? Jesus seems to think so, for he also tells them, “If anyone asks you what you are doing just tell them this: ‘the Lord needs it.’” So they went in and they found the colt. They untied it and someone asked them what they were doing. And […]
Continue readingThe Scent of Sacrifice
Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 You may recall that this scene made it into the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Judas, growing increasingly outraged at the direction things are going, just loses it here. He sings essentially the same words that are in the text. Meanwhile, Mary and a chorus of women are singing a soothing song to Jesus, urging him to relax: try not to get worried; don’t you know everything is alright now, everything’s fine. We want you to sleep well tonight. Let the world turn without you tonight. In the play, Jesus needs soothing because he has become overwhelmed by the masses coming to him for healing. But in the actual biblical text in John’s gospel, if he needs soothing, we can probably attribute that to what has happened just before this text. In the previous chapter, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead. And for Lazarus and […]
Continue readingFathers and Sons
Luke 15:11-32 There was a father who had two sons. One son behaved respectfully, never disagreeing with his father, always deferential. When his father would say, “When you use the car, don’t leave an empty gas tank for the next person. Fill it up, please,” this son would say, “Sure dad, I will.” But he never did. The other son was just plain rude. He would say to his father, “That’s a stupid rule to have! It’s a ridiculously petty thing to care about, and I don’t know why it matters to you.” But he never left an empty tank. He always filled it. Which was the good son? Which son was better? There was a father who had two sons. When they were grown, one son stayed at home with his father and cared for him in his old age, took care of the house so his father could remain there. He possessed a sense of duty that served him and […]
Continue readingThe Season of Second Chances
Isaiah 55:1-9 ; Luke 13:1-9 I think that our problem, sometimes, is our wanting to find easy answers to our hard questions. We don’t care much for ambiguity, and neither did Jesus’ early followers. So when the news came to them about a disaster that befell some Galileans, they looked for answers in the wrong places. In September 2001, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell sat in front of a TV camera, musing together about why they thought the towers fell and nearly 3,000 people died. They seemed to like the theory that it was the feminists, pagans, and civil libertarians – in other words, people not like them – who were at fault, because they made God mad at America. The temptation of being able to say those people had it coming is a strong one. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell didn’t invent this; it’s an old, old way of thinking. […]
Continue readingChicks Like Us
Luke 13:31-35 Considering these last few verses of Luke’s 13thchapter, I think it’s worthwhile looking back at the chapter as a whole. Not because these verses are connected. But because the whole chapter feels weirdly disconnected. It reminds me of that picture book, If You Give a Mouse A Cookie. You know how it goes? If you give a mouse a cookie, he will probably ask for some milk to go with it. And when he finishes, he will look at himself in the mirror to see if he has a milk mustache, and when he looks in the mirror he will notice that he needs a haircut, so he will ask you for a nail scissors, and on it goes. Jesus is acting kind of like that mouse in this chapter. He’s just jumping from one thing to another thing to another thing – and there’s no apparent connection between […]
Continue readingWhen You’re in the Wilderness
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Luke 4:1-13 In the early 1990’s a young man named Chris McCandless left his home and family and friends to travel the United States. He shed himself of all his money and most of his material possessions. He lost his car. He eventually found his way to the wilderness of Alaska. He lived there for a few months alone in an abandoned bus. He died there after apparently eating toxic plants. Chris McCandless set off with dreams of discovery in the wild. But he discovered the wilderness is harsh. A few years later, a woman named Cheryl Strayed set off on a journey of self-discovery along the Pacific Crest Trail. She traveled alone, carrying only what she could fit in her backpack. She fared better than Chris did. She actually made out pretty well – aside from one or two encounters with unsavory characters, and a brush with […]
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