Jesus longs to generate in us a kind of holy impatience, a longing for real transformation. Deep down, something in us wants to awaken, to come alive, to fall in love with life and with the divine Source of life. Something within us wants us to grow. Sin is sometimes defined as the refusal to grow, as the stubborn insistence…
Love your enemies? Our response might well be, “I don’t think so! That’s an impossibly high bar, and not even a desirable one, when people and communities I care about, and values I hold dear, are being trampled and cast aside.” What’s circulating in many of us – including me – are feelings like anger, shock, anxiety, overwhelm, maybe even…
It’s probably the world’s shortest sermon: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). I suppose I could have spoken that sentence from the pulpit this morning and left it at that. I imagine something like a surge of energy being released around the room when Jesus said those words. Today the Scripture has been fulfilled, he…
Is it possible that in our baptism we’ve been given more power than we know? Is it possible that in this perilous and precarious time, we can draw fresh strength from our baptism? Is it possible that in our baptism God has given us great riches – riches that can give us strength to rise to the occasion and to…
Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” can’t be answered glibly. We’re all on a journey to discovering who Jesus really is, who God really it. Even a supposedly “correct” answer must be held lightly and patiently re-examined. Some questions are best kept open and lived into. As poet Rainer Maria Rilke famously advised in his Letters to…
My message today boils down to three words: Abide in love. I hope you’ll keep listening, but I will confess right up front that everything I have to say will be a riff on that. Years ago, when I was in seminary, someone told me that a preacher should never say the word “love” in a sermon unless the readings…
Our Good Shepherd created, redeems, and sustains the whole Creation, and that’s why we’re using such expansive prayers today – prayers that seek to honor the sacredness of the whole living world that is so lit up with the presence of God. We may be praying inside a building today, but our prayers are joining the prayers that are already…
it seems that only now – after our pride and defiance have been humbled and brought low – only now can we understand that every part of ourselves is being invited to the feast, that everything in us that we have cast away, abandoned, and rejected is being invited into the presence of God to be welcomed and healed and…
Today we stand on the mountaintop, soaking up the light of Christ and letting ourselves be filled with his love. Even now, the glory that shone through Jesus Christ is shining in our hearts, longing to blaze up like fire and to melt away everything in us that is less than love. As we give ourselves to the great work…
At the beginning of today’s story, hope is only a rumor. By the end, the disciples themselves embody hope: they will give their lives to the possibility that God’s love will be fully expressed in the world. Rather than quietly accepting a killing status quo, they will join God’s mission to reconcile and heal, and they will bear witness to…
