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
Today's Gospel passage makes the connection very explicit. Jesus asks the disciples to bring him what little food they have -- five loaves and two fish -- and he orders the crowds to sit down on the grass. Take a look at the next sentence: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed…
That sentence from Matthew is one of a group of sentences from Scripture that are often called the “comfortable words. ” If you grew up with the 1928 Prayer Book, you may remember that after the confession and absolution, the priest would say “Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him. Come unto…
I felt like Moses in today's reading from Deuteronomy, who wanted so much to pass along the deepest wisdom he knew and the most likely path to joy: to love God with our whole heart and mind and strength. As Moses said, "Put these words of mine in your heart and soul Teach them to your children, talking about them…
What interests me most in the scene we just heard is imagining what the beloved disciple experienced on that Easter morning. Of course, other characters also appear in the story of the empty tomb - Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter - but it is the beloved disciple who most attracts my attention. That is lucky for me, I guess, because…
James Hansen, our leading climatologist, just issued what may be the most important scientific assessment of global warming in years. He argues that significant greenhouse gas reductions must be made immediately “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”
Billy Graham tells a wonderful story about belief. One morning an acrobat begins pushing a wheelbarrow across a tightrope suspended high above Niagara Falls. When he reaches the other side, he turns around and carefully pushes the wheelbarrow back along the wire, as a crowd gathers to watch in amazement. Then the acrobat tak
