You and I hear the events of Holy Week in relation to what is on our hearts and minds just now, and for me, the words and actions of Holy Week take place this year in relation to the distress of the natural world. Sometimes it seems that I can almost hear the relentless melting of glaciers as our climate…
So I find it interesting that on this Sunday for refreshment, this Sunday for rejoicing, our assigned readings from Hebrew Scripture and from the Gospels focus directly or indirectly on the cross. These two passages are in fact the same ones that we hear in September on Holy Cross Day. We may associate the cross with a lot of things,…
Then comes the funny bit. This act of hospitality is met with a promise so patently absurd that Sarah, who is secretly listening at the entrance to the tent, bursts out laughing. Her husband is 100 years old and she is 90. They are no spring chickens, either one of them, so how can their pleasant but obviously rather obtuse…
I laughed. Well, I thought, laughter is a good thing. Laughter breaks open the mind. And I think that is the point of the story: when we find ourselves in Christ's presence, our minds break open. We awaken. We see the world with new eyes. We understand afresh, as the poet says, that “the world is charged with the grandeur…
Who are the Wise Men?
Nobody knows. Some scholars say they were Zoroastrian priests from Persia. Others say they were Babylonian astrologers. Still others say they were astronomers or philosophers. Despite the familiar hymn, “We Three Kings,“ the Gospel never tells us that they were kings or that there were three of
But -- talk about disruption! Check out this morning's Gospel. The angel comes to Mary and announces a great disruption in Mary's life: she will conceive and bear a son; she will name him Jesus -- that is, the one who saves. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and his kingdom will have no end. Mary…
These days you can also check out a special exhibit on climate change, which features, as you walk in, a room with a red line on the wall that traces the levels of heat-trapping gases in the Earth's atmosphere. The red line begins at the year 1600, and the line is well below your knees -- where it has stayed…
The way that Matthew's Gospel tells the story, the question is not asked out of a sincere desire to understand what Jesus is thinking or to connect with him as a person - it is posed from a place of challenge and suspicion, from that wary, critical, mistrustful place where we eye the other person and says, “Who does he…
Right now most of us are not just playing a card game called “Fluxx” - we're living it. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the bailout of A.I.G. and the proposed bailout of the whole system of mortgage financing -- well, our country's entire economic system suddenly looks alarmingly fragile. There is talk that we may…
It's also Labor Day weekend, and this morning we give thanks for the men and women who fought for, and succeeded in giving us, the minimum wage and the forty-hour week, unemployment compensation, health and safety regulations in the workplace, and the right of workers to organize for collective bargaining. We give thanks today for those whose work benefits the
