Our Old Testament reading for this morning comes from the Book of Esther. This is the only Sunday in our entire three-year lectionary cycle that we hear from this book, so I am willing to bet that most of you do not know the story that this book tells. For...

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Last week, this week, and next week our first reading comes from the Book of Proverbs, one of the books of Wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Wisdom in ancient Israel and early Judaism included at least six important elements: knowledge, imagination, discipline, piety, order, and moral instruction. According to...

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Our Gospel reading this week from John got me thinking a lot about abundance, scarcity and excess. Here we have a story in which Jesus’ disciples see the scene in front of them through the lens of scarcity. They see thousands of people spread out before them and all they...

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