June 5, 2020
The concept of the Trinity is a very difficult one to explain or describe. I have experienced the different members of the Trinity and have affection for it/them. This Sunday I would like to give you a more personal glimpse into this beautiful mystery.
May 15, 2020
For me, this scripture contains one of the most human passages Jesus utters in all of the Gospel of John. Remember, this is the Gospel where Jesus is constantly reminding us of his divinity. But it is also one in which we know we will never, ever, again, be alone. Let’s read that in verse 18: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” We are never left alone in this world, to do the work of God. We are invited not just into that everlasting bond and relationship, but we are given the keys to how that living should happen just a few verses earlier, verse 15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
May 4, 2020
Today’s text is all about the power of God. It is Jesus reminding us that we have witnessed, throughout history, God’s redeeming Grace and work in the world, yet we always seem to find ways to disbelieve. We seem to always find ways to rely on our senses, our worldly selves, what we see in front of us for answers. We not only disbelieve that which we have not personally witnessed; we disbelieve that which has not agreed with our own worldviews. And that has led to the tragedies of the ages, whether the disputes are between neighbors and you don’t talk for a few days and feelings get hurt or between nations and you don’t talk for a few months and war is declared and thousands, and sometimes millions, pay the price. How quickly we forget that all is from God, and we repeat the mistakes of history. Of sin. Of the person’s folly when people rely only on their own selves. And this is the lesson today.
April 26, 2020
God seems to specialize in allowing our dreams to first be betrayed, then flounder, so that we’re left in this sea of uncertainty about not just what we saw, but about who we are.
April 19, 2020
I am sometimes asked by my confirmands and new members alike why I plop down with a “whump!” a huge print Bible in front of them with the admonition, “may this serve you well through all your life’s journey”. And this week’s scripture should remind us why we need to read the Bible in more than just a sentence or two on a phone screen through something like Bible Gateway, a popular website which gives the Bible in electronic form.
April 12, 2020
We might all remember seeing “The Greatest Story Ever Told” or one of the other great bible epics and remembered from somewhere deep in our recollections that there was thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and the soldiers fell, and with great and unmistakable power, the LORD causes the stone to roll away and the soldiers to fall and proudly proclaim on Easter morning…what do we say on Easter…oh, c’mon we can do better than that…that’s right. He’s Risen. He has risen indeed.
April 5, 2020
As a younger person, maybe we were taken with reading, for some of us heady stuff like Dostoyevsky but I’m talking trash novels here, Harlequin romances or detective novels in the age of only three TV networks and no cable. You remember those, the ones with Fabio on the cover, men and women who didn’t exist in real life but lept off the page to let us enter into their angst: she loves me, he loves me not, oh when will they ever get together if only she didn’t realize that he knew that she could never be the things that he feared most for her feelings that would only be validated if he could only know her inner truths to his habitual taking her to the places that only they knew they could go if but his feelings had not stopped her from acknowledging their love.
