All Saints Day
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I sometimes wonder what it means to be proud. Am I proud of who I am? Is that okay? And why? Did I have anything to do with it? What have I done to take pride in? Upon pondering these things I find myself thinking that I’m proud to be a child of God, but I can’t take credit for that. I can say I’m proud…
Entirely Fire
After the last few weeks when we have heard parables of violence and exclusion, it’s something of a relief to get to the two great commandments, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ And ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ For most of us this is the center of Jesus’ teaching. But I wonder whether that is right. Jesus himself says, “On these two commandments…
What is Caesar’s?
In this morning’s gospel reading we hear an attempt by the religious leaders to trap Jesus into saying something that will get him into trouble with the Roman authorities, and probably with the people as well. Paying taxes may be unpopular today but in Jesus time it was much more so. Taxes were collected by unscrupulous tax collectors who made their living by the tax they pocketed, and the money they passed on went to support the Roman emperor and…
Life in Death
Today’s parable comes from the final section of teaching material in Matthew’s gospel. It’s in a section that, had he used subtitles, Matthew might have called “Authority.” Jesus is already in Jerusalem, his triumphal entry on the donkey just happened and the religious leaders are doing everything they can to trap him and to diminish his authority in the sight of the people. It’s a plan that’s not going so well. So Jesus tells a very pointed story. The owner…
Walking the Jordan
Walking the Jordan River
Wilderness
Today I’m going to break one of my own rules of preaching and start a sermon with a joke. So here it is: a boastful preacher, perhaps a Baptist but perhaps a Dominican since the Dominicans are a Catholic order who pride themselves in their preaching, anyway, a boastful preacher told his friends that give him any subject, any subject and he could come up with a biblical text and preach a full sermon, with no preparation. So of course,…
This land belongs to…
This land is your land, this land is our land; this land was made for you and me. When Woodie Guthry wrote this iconic song in 1944 it had a different slant. There were two verses that don’t appear in this version. In one, Guthrie challenges private property ; There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn’t say nothing; This land was…
Forests
Today we start our annual celebration of Creation. From today through the first Sunday in October we will be focusing on God’s work and God’s presence in the created world. If I were to ask you what is the biggest living creature, some of you would say the blue whale, and some would debate what actually we mean by living. But I doubt that many of us would immediately say Pando. Pando is a forest, but all of its 47,000…
Living Sacrifice
When Paul wrote to the churches he had founded, he typically spent part of the letter talking about theology and then turned to its practical application. In this morning’s reading from Romans we heard the beginning of his practical section. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed…