Both Old and New Testament Lessons today speak of the God who is made known in acts and attitudes of openness and hospitality. These texts also encourage those who would be the People of this God who invites hospitality, to set a table in their community-life together, so as to become welcoming and inviting to one another and other folks in the wider world. This hospitality is not only a matter of food, but of openness, and an invitation to study, listen, and participate in community life.

Today’s Old Testament Lesson comes from what may well be the last layer… Continue reading →

The Church through the ages has devised several names for this Sunday. Mostly in the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is called Thomas Sunday. From this tradition, the Western Church adopted reading the story about Thomas and Jesus from John 20 as the yearly Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Easter. In the Eastern Church Thomas is not known for his doubting, but for his confession of faith that comes near the end of the story (“My Lord and My God.”) Thomas is also honoured by a tradition that names him as the missionary that took the Gospel to India… Continue reading →

My favourite poet is the 19th century New Englander Emily Dickinson, who was a recluse, and published almost nothing in her lifetime. After her death boxes of poems were found – short, pithy, cryptic, not a few a little iconoclastic. One of my very favourites, as it happens, is the one that goes this way:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or everyone be blind –

It has always… Continue reading →

Each Palm Sunday we look at one of the four accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Each of the four contributes specific materials to the way in which we may try to understand what Jesus was up to when he rode into Jerusalem because it seem clear that he had a purpose in mind. The way we’ve been taught to think of this story probably has made it into a more spectacular event that it was. We were, I think, mostly taught to think of it as done with a “cast of thousands,” in a kind of Mardi Gras event… Continue reading →

It seems that we’ve been getting our April showers a little early this year, but at least it isn’t snow (for now)! As I was walking into the mall the other day, I was delighted to see some daffodils coming up. The landscapers aerated our lawn the other day. We took a drive up the Mississippi river yesterday and saw hints of buds on some trees. Even this “winter-lover’s” heart was warmed by these signs and they put a bit of “spring in my step,” so to speak. Does it do good things to you to think about Spring and… Continue reading →