The origin story for Lent, one might say, is Jesus’ venture into the wilderness for forty days. That image rolls off our tongues and out of our sermons as though we know what happened is described by only eleven verses in Matthew’s gospel and thirteen in Luke’s. The conversation between Jesus and the tempter can…
Recent church tradition names this Sunday—the last Sunday of Epiphany before Lent begins—as Transfiguration Sunday, which means the Gospel reading for the day in most mainline churches is the story of Jesus transformation in front of Peter, James, and John, which we just read together. The story shows up In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, each…
I waited until this morning to post my sermon in hopes that it would not get quite as buried under the Super Bowl hype. The text is 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, a passage that offers a less-than-flattering look at the people in the Corinthian church, but also offers a connection with them because they acted in…
My sermon this week grew out of three verses where Jesus talks about seeing ourselves as salt and light, and his words set me thinking about metaphors, particularly the metaphors we use to understand who we are. Thanks for reading. The sermon title gives me reason to also add if you have not subscribed to…
failer it’s been thirty years since we first watched Phil Connors keep waking up in Punxsutawney trying to figure out how not to live the same day again and again and again he failed failed failed . . . someone calculated that it took about thirty-four years of February seconds for Phil to get to…
I started a new interim today–actually a bridge interim, which means I am there to bridge between two stages of life for the congregation. The passage today was the Beatitudes. As I say in the sermon, a book, a conversation, and a movie gave me a new way to look at these familiar words. _______________________________…
hardship “Hardship is routinely hidden.”–Kieran Setiya the sentence came at the end of the second paragraph I’m not sure he meant for it to be as significant as it was as I read down the page I think about people I meet our stories were mostly hidden we are trained to keep them so the…
get rhythm I live with an arrhythmia I know of what I speak it’s awfully hard to dance when you cannot find the beat somewhere along the way as I traveled through my week the metaphor extended ‘cause we still can’t find the beat to life beyond these past two years of isolation and defeat…
The title of the interview was “The Pleasures of Disorientation”–a phrase that caught my attention. It was another in Conversations with Billy Collins, and from it came these words, in response to the question, “What is it about mystery and disorientation that is so appealing?”: For disorientation to be a pleasure–an odd concept in the…
I have had a quiet day today marking what would have been my mother’s ninety-first birthday. As I sat down to write, I went back to what I wrote for and read at her memorial service. They seemed like good words to repeat. When my father died, I adapted a poem I had written for…