And then he says that line that we know so well: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This saying of Jesus was so basic to his mission that it shows up in each of th
Our Lenten season of prayer and self-examination invites us to bring before God our deepening concern about the health of God's precious, unrepeatable, fragile Creation. We just experienced what's being called “the winter that never was.” You noticed that, right? Winter 2012 will go down as t
Today’s Gospel can be applied just as vigorously to contemporary social and political issues. Here comes Jesus, charging through the temple with his whip of cords, maybe not hurting anybody but certainly making a good deal of commotion as he drives out the sheep and cattle from the temple’s outer area, pours out the
Of course I had heard of Alexandra Dawson. You don't have to have lived long in the Pioneer Valley -- or anywhere else in New England, for that matter -- to know Alexandra's name! Everyone recalls her in terms that suggest a force of nature. She was a woman of formidable intelligence and wit -- someone with an imposing physical…
Now I want to ask -- what happens inside you when you hear facts like these? How does your body respond? If you're like me, you feel something constrict or tighten up. When I think about global warming, I sometimes feel my belly squeeze and my breathing get shallow. I want to push the news away. I don't want to…
The trips to Mississippi and Montreal overlapped, and I couldn’t take both. I decided to go to Montreal, so for several days in Advent I mingled with delegates of the World Council of Churches, listened to speeches, wrote editorials, and joined thousands of citizens in marching through the city’s streets. It was the most vigorous celebratio
So here on the First Sunday of Advent, we ask ourselves: What are we waiting for? What is it that sets our heart on fire with longing? What is it that we await with eagerness and hope? When we ask ourselves such questions, no doubt all sorts of answers spring to mind, for all sorts of things may seem desirable…
Let's take it from the top. Once upon a time there was a king -- a wise and all-powerful king who decided to hold a wedding banquet for his son. He got everything ready and prepared a feast of the finest foods. He sent out invitations to his chosen guests, saying “Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet” (Matthew…
Take today's Gospel, for example. “The kingdom of heaven is like...” Jesus begins, and off he goes into a story that looks perfectly ordinary. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, agrees with the laborers to pay them the usual daily wage, and sends them out into his vineyard to work. The day…
We grin because it's so reasonable. If someone strode down a beach, waded into the surf, and tried to walk along the surface of the sea, you and I would dismiss the person as delusional. It would be absurd: you can't do it; you can't violate the laws of physics like that. Yet here we have a story in which…
