Occasionally I am asked by someone who is not a Christian, “You don’t really believe in all that resurrection stuff do you?” I have learned not to just answer this question immediately, but instead to spend some time learning a little bit more about what the person is really asking me. More often than not, […]
Maundy Thursday. The evening when we are reminded of the “Great Mandate” the “Great Commandment,” the “New Commandment.” “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love […]
The festival of Passover was a threat to the Roman authorities of Jesus’ day. After all, this was the week when the Jewish people remembered their liberation by God with feasting and with storytelling. It was the week when the Jewish people celebrated a God who led them out of slavery and bondage. It is […]
I want to begin by taking a step back and putting our Gospel story for today, Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet with nard, into larger context. In the Gospel of John, we have seen Jesus call his disciples, begin his ministry by turning water into wine, clear the temple of the money changers, and talk […]
Human beings are meaning makers. With our big and complex brains, we are able to take in and process a lot of information. We are also able to think about the information we take into our brains in an abstract way. It is what makes us distinct from other creatures. Take my cat for example. […]
Painting by Christian Weber Have you heard the story about the little boy who was riding his tricycle down a sidewalk? Suddenly, one of the little wheels on the back fell off. The little boy jumped off his trike and said, “I’ll be damned!” At that very moment a priest happened to be walking by, […]
Did you know that they make glasses that cause the wearer’s vision to be turned upside-down? When you look through the glasses, up is down, left is right and right is left. The idea behind the lesson is to help us understand how our eyes take in what they see and then flip it upside-down […]
I have mentioned in a previous sermon that I am participating in a one-year Ignatian retreat. Learning and practicing the various Ignatian spiritual exercises has been a true gift. My favorite practice from Ignatius is the practice of approaching Scripture with one’s imagination. Ignatius believed that God uses everything to speak to us, including our […]
Because very few of us regularly sit down and read entire books of the Bible from start to finish in one or just a few readings, we don’t often think about why the author of a particular book put a story where it is in the narrative. For example, Matthew says that Jesus’ first public […]