God’s life with us
In the very first line of the book of Revelation, we learn that the author is in a prison colony—Patmos: a small, rugged island in the Aegean Sea. He is there as a prisoner of...
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With
Homemaking. The Christian life is a kind of homemaking. To make a home in this world, to make a life together, the routines and practices, the rituals and habits, where a people learn how to...
Just because
Resurrection is supposed to mean a new world. Easter is supposed to mark a new beginning, a new creation, the old passing away as all things are reborn. But here are the disciples, in our...
Forgiveness of sins
The Easter story is so familiar to us that I think we miss the shock, perhaps even the terror, of someone coming back from the dead. Especially when, as we hear in our passage from...
Wounded peace
On Palm Sunday we stand at the edge of Lent, looking toward Easter. Today, with our story from Luke’s Gospel, with Jesus riding into Jerusalem, the crowds sweep us into holy week. In the story,...
Love without calculation
In the story from John’s Gospel, they are preparing for Passover, the annual festival to remember the liberation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. The focus of the days of commemoration are the sacrifices...
Prodigal God
The story centers on the impatience of the younger of the two sons. He wants his inheritance before the death of his father. I’ll read verse 12: “He said to his father, ‘Father, give me...
Wait
Psalm 27:14, “Wait for God; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for God.” When a bible passage repeats a phrase, that’s usually a signal to pay attention. So I thought we’d pay...
Sending
Numbers 6:24-26 (VT #826), Jeremiah 29:4-11 (VT #783), Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, 21 (VT #292), Matthew 28:16, 18-20 (VT #451) This is the last sermon in this series on what I’ve learned about...
Sharing
Colossians 3:15-17 (VT #818), 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 (VT #785), Luke 24:13-35 (VT #470) We share. That’s what we do here. That’s what church is about for us. Not just here, during worship on Sundays, but...
Preaching
Nehemiah 8:1-8, Deuteronomy 6:4-7 (VT #187), John 1 (VT #235) In Marilynne Robinson’s novel Lila, the main character asks her husband, who happens to be a pastor, a question about preaching. She asks him, “What...
Praying
Psalm 13 (VT #728), Psalm 46:10 (VT #730), Romans 8:26 (VT #729), Philippians 4:4-7 (VT #726) As you probably noticed, all of our Bible passages for today are taken from one page of our hymnal,...
Singing
Psalm 100 (VT #20), Psalm 47:1, 6-7 (VT #108), Isaiah 42:10-11 (VT #106), Revelation 7:9-12 (VT #110) I’m not very good at singing. You probably already knew that. I don’t really know how to read...
Image of the Spirit
I wake up, I use the bathroom, I drink some coffee, I eat some food, I brush my teeth, I write emails, I drink more coffee, I use the bathroom again, I might go on...
Pondered in her heart
Last year when I spent a week helping out at the migrant shelter in Tijuana, I met a woman who was very pregnant, within weeks of her due date. She was from Guatemala, from the...
Incarnation
The incarnation. This season is a celebration of the incarnation, of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. These stories about the advent of Jesus, the stories about his birth and life and death—all of...
What should we do?
“What then should we do?” (Luke 3:10). That’s what the crowds say. That’s their response to John the Baptist, when he stands along the banks of the river Jordan, calling the people to repentance. “You...
You hold me, I hold you
I’ve mentioned before that I used to teach classes in prisons, mostly at one in Durham and another in Raleigh, both of them state prisons. But I also would drive up the highway to Butner...
What I did not understand
At the beginning of the story of Job, at the beginning of the book, Job had it all—wealth, possessions, family, perfect health. Then that life is taken from him. All of it. Oxen and donkeys,...
Surely you know
After thirty chapters of silence, God finally speaks to Job. God answers with questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4) “Where is the way to the dwelling of light?”...
To fear God for nothing
Job has been blessed with the good life. He has it all. He has what’s sounds like to be a lovely family, grown children who like each other enough to spend time together. And he...
Are you jealous?
Here’s how I like to tell my story of church wandering, of moving from one kind of church to another—the way I’ve switched Christian traditions several times during my forty years. As a kid, my...
Gentleness born of wisdom
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” James asks in our reading for today. “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (James 3:13). A good life. That’s...
Mercy triumphs over judgement
We misrecognize. We get people wrong. We interpret the lives of others according to the ideas in our heads. We make evaluations based on our inventions of types of people. We make decisions on what...
Eat my flesh
At this point in the story, Jesus has become a big deal. These verses we heard today are at the end of chapter 6, but we should remember how the chapter began—with that scene on...
Bread from heaven
This week the Bible passage are all about food again, just like last week. The central story this time is the miraculous provision of manna in the desert. God hears the complaints of the people,...
Food in due season
The Bible passage we heard make me hungry. They’re all about food. Psalm 145:15, “We look to you, O God, and you give us food in due season.” In 2 Kings 4 we have a...
Woe to the shepherds
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:1) Jeremiah prophesies God’s condemnation of leaders who forsake their people, shepherds who neglect the flock. The leaders...
Toward redemption
“This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people” (Ephesians 1:14). I remember those summers as a kid when the public library would have their reading challenge. If you read ten...
Content with weaknesses
“I am content with weaknesses… for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). I have a lot of weaknesses. Spiritual, emotional, physical, relational. A very long list. And I’m sure I’ve...