Posts filed under: Preaching

Easter 5

Eastertide is a season of miracles. The resurrection of Jesus is followed by stories of miraculous healing at the hands of Peter and Paul and their shadows and handkerchiefs. Easter doesn’t look like that anymore. What are we to do with these stories? They are stories of power. They tell a story of possibility. They...... Read More

Easter 4

Where are the women? The long-standing practice of the Church is to read through Acts during Eastertide to follow the development of the people of the Way into what will become of the Church. Given that the Gospel of Luke and Acts are presented as having been written by the same hand, it is striking...... Read More

Easter 3

It seems like the resurrection generated more questions than it answers. Now what? The old questions are still on the table, will Jesus use his power to restore Israel to a self-governing monarchy? The good news exists in the crucible of Roman occupation. The resurrection has not dispensed with the Romans and their brutality and...... Read More

Easter 2

During the 50 days of Easter, the story would’ve spread like wildfire. And not everyone would’ve told it the same way. Someone would have told a story of one formerly outcast woman going to the tomb by herself, determined to complete the burial rites and then if necessary, to carry his body away all by...... Read More

Eastertide

It ain’t ova! Eastertide, the season of Easter: Fifty days of wonder as an impossible story spreads in ripples and waves and soon everyone knows someone who knows someone who saw him or touched him. In Easter week, Jesus is walking through walls (Monday), having a fish barbeque on the beach (Tuesday), opening minds to...... Read More

Easter Sunday

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb alone, knowing that she was likely to be alone once she got there. No one publicly grieves a failed messiah. Except perhaps, for a woman who is called a sinner in public and a whore in private and sometimes the other way around. Mary saw that the tomb was...... Read More

Palm Sunday

Walking the Way: What is this strange thing that we do, walking around our churches and neighborhoods, waving palms from trees that are not native to where we are waiving them (for most of us), accompanied by choirs, the rare few with young acolytes on the backs of donkeys? Is it a living gospel? Is...... Read More

Love in the Wilderness

Let us pray: May the written word through the spoken word draw us to the living Word. Amen. Lent is a wilderness carved out in space and time with prayer, self-sacrifice, fasting, meditation, self-examination and, the study of the scriptures. All of these are wilderness ways. Yet, there is more than one kind of wilderness....... Read More

Feast of the Annunciation

Gentle Followers, I am behind and off-track. My calendar is a wilderness of commitments.  I wanted to leave you a world for the next nine months: Marytide. In the midst of the Lenten season as we prepare to walk the way of Calvary, a way of suffering and death, we are also walking the way...... Read More

Lent 5

The first lesson contains the words of a prophet speaking to Israel’s restoration after their decimation, deportations and exile. We read it affirming God’s fidelity past and present, without erasing or negating the original cultural context. The psalm is a riot of praise for all of God’s works. (Year W was not initially conceived of...... Read More