JAR OF MEAL, JUG OF OIL
A jar of flour that can be not emptied. A jug of oil that can not fail. During a time of famine a visitor, a stranger comes and asks to be fed. A widow and her child who are soon to die in the famine feed the visitor and are blessed with abundance, food […]
SITTING IN THE SHADE
Three strangers come walking up unexpected and are treated to a meal. Abraham’s hospitality welcomes them. He shares his table. The food is prepared. The meal is served. They drink deeply in their thirst. They enjoy the shade together. In such simple things the mystery of the Universe and the nature of God are […]
RUSHING WIND
It is dark. Pitch black. There is nothing. Except the dark waters rippling, and the mighty wings of Spirit, hovering, brooding over the waters, a rushing wind, a storm from God getting ready for something amazing. “Let there be light.” And it happens, a silent explosion, creation, the whole universe begins, and all there is […]
STAY UNTIL…
The blue lights flash through the rear window of the car. He pulls over. He tells the officer that he’s sorry but that he’s lost and has been driving back and forth for 45 minutes looking for a road that he can’t find. The officer looks at him and says, “How is driving so fast […]
CONVERSION
It is easy to talk about other people, about what they do or say or believe. Sometimes it is idle chatter, or gossip, or something more devious like slander. It is safer to talk about others rather than talking about what is going on in our own lives, our own hearts, it is easier to […]
SET APART
What sets us apart? How are we each different? Unique? The people of Israel are God’s chosen people, what sets them apart? How do they honor that calling? By how they eat, how they dress, how they bath, how they speak, how they treat one another, how they treat those who are not Jewish. […]
RELENTLESS
We are being pursued. Relentless. Tenacious. Pursuit. The Shepherd is following us. Most of the time the shepherd walks very slowly, quietly, graciously. Other times the shepherd moves like lightening, rod and staff striking with explosive force, making a way that is safe. Nothing stops the shepherd, nothing, even death, even the grave is […]
BLOOD
In the garden. “By Adam’s fall we sin all.” In the garden humanity fell, Adam and Eve, gave into temptation, trying to blame some one else for taking what was not theirs to take. Here we are in the garden again. The humanity of God, the word made flesh, Jesus, tempted but […]
THE PROPHETS WHO WERE BEFORE YOU
I don’t know very much about being persecuted or reviled because of following Jesus. The last of the nine beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel is about that. This is the last sermon of a Lenten sermon series on the Beatitudes. Here is the final Beatitude. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and […]
COTTER PIN
The world is a dangerous place. It is full of pain, and cruelty, horror and atrocity. Some people say this is proof that there is no God, or that if there is a God then it is a God who is weak or indifferent or vicious. The problem with those folks is that they are […]
The Merciful, The Pure in Heart
A man was in the parking lot of a laundry mat, he was taking his clothes to wash them. Two young men walk up and demand his wallet. But the man with the laundry also carried a gun, so he shot and killed his two robbers. He was in his rights, it was self defense, […]
HOPEFULLISTS
What does the outward and visible sign of God’s presence look like? Ultimately Jesus is that Grace of God, made visible, made physical. The Beatitudes are about the abiding presence Jesus, the physical visible sign of God’s presence in a world that is collapsing. What is an outward and visible sign of the world collapsing? […]
A WASTE OF TIME
The ashes of wasted love. Burning up something that is precious and priceless. The wreckage of the love of which we are capable. Sin. Today it is quite literally rubbed in our faces. The ashes are brand new, I just burned up the palm fronds from last years Palm Sunday, when we welcomed Jesus […]
ONE
Collect: Lord you are One God in trinity of persons. We pray for all the peoples of your earth; that we may be One through the humanity of Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we become the fullness of divinity, through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Where to begin? Perhaps […]
COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Moses was having a bad day. The first time Moses came down the Mountain, things didn’t go so well. There was the Golden calf, he lost his temper, and he smashed the Ten Commandments on the ground. He was back up on the mountain again. He had the new set of the Ten Commandments, fresh […]
BLESSED WOE
What was that all about? That did not sound like the beatitudes that I remember. And where did all those woe’s come from? We read and hear the blessings and the woes in Luke and we try to make them like the beatitudes in Matthew that we hear all the time. We struggle for awhile […]
COMMUNION
(Queue: after Kyrie or Gloria) The liturgy will be different today. Today we have an instructed Eucharist. That means that I will be interrupting the liturgy periodically to explain what we are doing together. But first comes why we are here. Why? If all we want is to be decent people and to have a […]
Breaking the Idol
So Jesus begins his ministry and the first thing that happens is that the folks in his hometown try to kill him. To be honest he did provoke them. The reason they were so upset was because Jesus said that the good news of God’s kingdom, the healing and the feeding has always been for […]
JUBILEE
It is hard to start over. It is easier to start over when everything is lost, when we up and leave and go some where else, new people, new jobs, new friends, a new spouse, new children. But those habits of the heart are carried with us and we tend to rebuild the same old […]
PICKLES GALORE!
I like to make pickles. The top shelf of one of our kitchen cabinets is cram, packed full of crystal clear, empty glass jars. There are several sizes, pint, quart, two quarts all lined up and waiting for the summertime. As they are filled up with different kinds of pickles, relish and chow-chow, the jars […]
WATER
They walk down the path through the trees. They hear it long before they see it. The ground shakes, the air is thick and sweet and cool with mist. They walk further and then they arrive, water falling from the sky, a mighty river cascading down over the rocks. The gift of water, and the […]
WHEN GOD CAME TO TOWN
They took God away. The empire marched into town and they turned us into slaves. We now belonged to Pharaoh. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was gone. They took our pasture, they took our flocks, they took our freedom, they took everything except the Sky, they would have tried to own that too, […]
God’s Propaganda
Advent 1c 2006 Jack Hardaway “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from […]
THE GREAT THANKSGIVING
Brothers and sisters in Christ, some people say that the glass is half empty. Others say that the glass is half full. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is not so, they are both wrong. We are here tonight because the cup runneth over! There is much more going on here than turkey and […]