St Benedict – Bishop Lucinda
Photo by Randy Greve on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mariya_umama_wethemba_monastery/3667827023/ St. Benedict detail in fresco – Gritty version; St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, Kansas Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Heart Transplant
Romans 7:15-25a Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Our second reading this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Romans is often considered the most systematic statement of Paul’s theology. In most of his other letters, Paul is responding at least in part to particular problems in the church to which he writes. But in Romans, he seems to be trying to express his deepest understandings of the gospel. Today’s passage is a difficult one because it is taken out of its…
More than Coffee and Cookies
Romans 6:12-23 Matthew 10:40-42 The Sunday before last, we heard that Jesus sent his disciples out on a mission journey with the instructions “proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.” Then last week we heard the continuation of his charge to the disciples where he told them that his teaching was controversial and would lead to divisions…
Love Strongly
Genesis 21:8-21 Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Romans 6:1b-11 Matthew 10:24-39 Usually we omit the Old Testament reading on the third Sunday of the month but today it seems particularly important, so I decided this morning that we should include it. Like today’s gospel, it is a difficult reading. It is a difficult reading because it tells us about racial separation. It tells us that deep in the very early history of the Judaeo-Christian people, just as in this country and in…
Committed to Love
Matthew 9:35-10:8 They haven’t been as much in the news recently, but we have all heard of the Westboro Baptist church. It is known for picketing events, including soldiers’ funerals with signs that say things like “God hates Fags”. They are currently declaring “The Coronavirus is God’s Fury.” The backbone of the church is the Phelps family, who under the leadership of the late Fred Phelps developed an idiosyncratic theology based on God’s anger. To be a Phelps is to…
The Trinity and Racism
Trinity and Racism Genesis 1:1-2:4a Today is Trinity Sunday when we focus on the idea of God as three persons in total unity. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to us because we have no way of conceiving a Being who is more complex than ourselves. And there is no passage in the Bible which lays it out. Jesus talked a lot, at least in John’s gospel which we have been reading recently, about his oneness with the Father…
River of Living Water
Acts 2:1-21 John 7:37-39 Happy Birthday God’s People! Today is Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit arrived in wind and tongues of fire and the disciples found themselves on the streets, preaching the gospel. It is also the birthday of the church because it is the Holy Spirit working in and among us who creates the Body of Christ and enables us to be the church even when the church building is closed. It is the birthday of the…
It’s Not our First Choice
Acts 1:6-14 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 John 17:1-11 I haven’t yet worked out how to show pictures while we are live-streaming, which is a shame because there are many, many paintings of the ascension that we could look at. You can Google them if you’re interested. Most of them show Jesus going straight up or doing an arabesque as he ascends. There are one or two which show the disciples looking at his feet, but the one that intrigues me…
The Holy Coach
John 14:15-21 In a couple of weeks, we will be celebrating Pentecost, the day when the disciples saw tongues of fire and a rushing wind and, filled with courage, tumbled out onto the street proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. I have often wondered why most of us don’t have that experience today, why most of us don’t have the gifts of healing, of prophecy, of tongues. It occurred to me reading today’s gospel reading which is…
God’s Own People
1 Peter 2:2-10 John 14:1-14 Hallo my friends. How does it feel to be a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” as we heard in the second lesson? I imagine the “chosen race” part of that probably makes you as uncomfortable as it does me, but the writer was probably talking about our new identity as the children of God not the color of our skin or our ethnic background. As the beloved children of…