I always miss TEE in the summer months, mainly because it gives me a chance say things I’m thinking about and how they might go into a sermon. The passages we have read together this morning could have used a good session of TEE. The greatest puzzle among them is the Gospel Lesson, which seems to be a story about the long-distance healing of the servant of a Roman mercenary soldier, who never meets directly with Jesus, or hears his voice (so far as we know), and yet trusts Jesus in spite of that. Even Jesus, we read, was “amazed”… Continue reading →

Today, we’re about halfway through the Christian Year. We began with Advent and longing for a new relationship with God in the world, and we discovered it, as Christians, in the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, at Christmas (the shortest season of the Christian Year, only 12 days long). Christmas was followed by Epiphany, when we’re supposed to think about how this little baby that was born in a particular time and place (that is, long ago and far away) has meaning for the whole world with all its diversity and chaos. This was followed by Lent, as we prepared… Continue reading →

Today is Ascension Sunday, when the Easter season officially comes to an end. Most Baptists I know don’t know what to make of Ascension Sunday or, really, of Jesus’ ascension. Of course, most of us are aware that the New Testament says that this thing “happened,” and, it’s not that we can’t believe it, but most of us aren’t sure what significance it might have, other than marking the point at which Jesus’ disciples didn’t see him physically any more – which happened nearly two millennia ago. Is Ascension Sunday simply a way of marking the end of Jesus’ earthly… Continue reading →

What a world we live in! It’s a world that, at the same time, reaches both the heights of beauty and glory, and the depths of degradation and evil. We are greeted with both kinds of things almost every day in the news, and we know of it all instantly. Well, the world is what it is, and, with all its ambiguities, we know that Jesus has called folk like us to go out into that world, just as it is, to be his hands and feet. The heart of the Gospel is John 3:16, which was our call to… Continue reading →