All of our scripture lessons this morning point to that which is foundational to our identity as the People of God and the Community of Jesus’ Disciples. The lessons emphasize the importance of paying attention to what God is saying and doing in the world. This morning I’ll give pride of place to the Old Testament text from Isaiah 51. Three times in the English text of the verses we read, the Almighty says “Pay Attention”! “Listen Up”! “Listen to me” (verses 1, 4, and 7).

The ones God summons to pay attention are, first, called “you that pursue righteousness,… Continue reading →

Later in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is reported to have said: “Woe to you…you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” This passage is not picked up in the Revised Common Lectionary readings, but it was intended to speak to the kind of community Jesus was seeking to form and Matthew was seeking to build. I say this latter because, as I remind us almost every week, Matthew was remembering Jesus’ words, not just to reproduce them as they were 60 years before he wrote, and just “get them right,” but as a relevant word to his own… Continue reading →

In a few minutes we will sing a hymn called “O God, Unseen, Yet Ever Near,” written many years ago by the English hymn writer Edward Osler. The title speaks of a way in which I, at least, experience God in the world – unseen, unobtrusive, under the surface, and even, sometimes, unrecognized by me; yet, whom I sense as ever near, and so, vitally real!

The Bible has a reputation for always speaking of God as acting openly in the world, but, if we actually take time for a long read of the Bible and the world, we will… Continue reading →