Today we enter a long period in the church calendar that will stretch until the First Sunday in Advent at almost the end of the Calendar year. We call it Ordinary Time, which zeroes in on stories of Jesus’ life and work. After the season of Easter in which we emphasized the Risen Christ, and the new life he brings, and after we celebrated the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, with the new life the Spirit brings to God’s people, the Church, on this day, takes a moment at the beginning of this long period to reflect on how… Continue reading →

Happy Pentecost! Today we celebrate the coming of God’s spirit in a new way. The story of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has been, shall we say, actively in the news here of late. There’s something in us that sort of resonates to love stories and stories about the British monarchy. Witness the popularity of such books and television programs as “The Crown,” and “Victoria.” Here we have a combination of the two. As Americans, we seem especially to love stories, in which, a little bit of a monkey wrench (or as our British cousins would say,… Continue reading →

One of the things that we’ve been talking about during the 50 days of the Easter season is what discipleship is like looking back on the Resurrection rather than looking forward to it. The New Testament as a whole, and especially the four Gospels all look back on the Resurrection, even though much of the story they tell is set in the period of Jesus’ life before it. Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels was originally received by and is intended for people who did not know of the Resurrection, but who looked back to it as a glorious beginning. So… Continue reading →

We preachers sometimes get cynical about churches. From some sermons I have heard or read, you might think that the main goal of the vast majority of Christians is simply to get to heaven when they die, and what they most want to know is the least they have to do to get to there. I understand the temptation, but it’s not been my experience. I do think that some of us preachers have taught people to read the Bible in ways that are so unhelpful, that, for example, if Jesus says, as he does in Matthew’s Gospel that the… Continue reading →