Today we are celebrating Earth Day here at St. Andrew’s. Every year when Earth Day arrives, I think the same thing, “How typical of us humans to celebrate the planet that allows for our very existence only one day a year. Every day should be earth day. Perhaps we wouldn’t be in the planetary emergency […]
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” I think that forgiveness is talked about more in the Bible than any other topic. Maybe love is talked about more, but then again love and forgiveness are inextricably linked […]
My Easter Sunday sermon is one that I both look forward to writing with great anticipation and that I dread as well. I look forward to writing and preaching it because Easter is the most important day of the year for Christians. It is the day on which we celebrate that event that is the […]
It is Maundy Thursday. During the season of Lent, we have walked with Jesus from his temptation in the wilderness, through healings, teaching, preaching, and many challenges to the established order. He has consistently and continuously challenged the power of the world—power over, violence, exclusion, hoarding of resources, dominance, and the like, and shown that […]
It is approximately 30 CE, though we wouldn’t call it that because we keep a different calendar. And who am I? I am Hannah. I am the wife of a blacksmith. We live just outside of the city of Jerusalem. I am fortunate. I have reached the age of 50. My what an ancient age […]
You will not find many Bible study groups doing a study of the Book of Ezekiel. The book is difficult and disturbing. The prophet acts in bizarre ways, and God is often cold and calculating. God commands Ezekiel to do strange things. The book of Ezekiel uses imagery and theological ideas that are often disturbing […]
A man who was born blind in a world in which there is little space for him, sits day by day in the public square begging for others’ leftovers so that he can survive. When others see him all they can see is his unseeing eyes and they feel afraid, for they know in their […]
The Gospel of John is full of symbolic imagery, the contrast between darkness and light being perhaps the most prominent image of all. Jesus is the light. Those who follow him live in the light. Those opposed to him live in darkness. We saw this in our Gospel reading from last week about Nicodemus who […]
So, John 3:16. What do you think of when you hear those words? I think of football games with people holding up big signs that can be picked up by the tv camera. I think of judgment. It makes me roll my eyes and squirm. “For God so loved the world that he gave his […]
Why do we give things up or take things on during the season of Lent? It is certainly not something that Jesus’ first followers did. There is some evidence that early Christians fasted forty hours between Good Friday and Easter, but the custom of spending forty days in prayer and self-denial did not arise until […]