John 1:6-8, 19-28 Today on this third Sunday of Advent, we await the coming of the light. It is a dark season. We are a week away from the darkest day of the year – the day when the sun is farthest from this northern hemisphere, making our day short and our night long. It is a dark season, yet we await the coming of the light. It is a dark season for us in many ways. Day after day, the weight of this novel coronavirus darkens our land with sickness, want, loneliness, and death. It is a dark season around the world where the numbers of the sick and the dead continue to rise, where leaders try, or do not try, to alleviate the suffering around them. In a world where powerful people behave as though they own the power, rather than that they are stewards of it. Where […]
Continue readingTag: light of the world
Jesus Preaches, Part 2: Salt and Light
Matthew 5:13-20 There is an old English folktale that I have always loved, The Three Sillies. A young man is courting a farmer’s daughter and is invited to their house for dinner. During the meal, the daughter is sent down to the cellar to fetch the beer for supper. As she is drawing the beer she notices a mallet stuck in one of the beams overhead. And she thinks, “Suppose one day he and I get married and we have a son, and our son comes down to the cellar to get the beer and the mallet falls on his head and kills him!” and she is so overcome with grief she can’t move. Soon her mother comes down to look for her. “What is the matter with you?” she asks. The girl points to the mallet and tells her mother this imagined scenario – and the mother collapses […]
Continue reading
