Category Archive

Doesn’t it feel great to receive something when you feel like you haven’t quite earned it? It’s like the time my partner and I were in Chicago for a weekend, and they were just handing out free boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese on the street, but since we passed by that street corner again on our way back to the train, we came back home with 4 boxes of Mac & Cheese. I’m curious what comes to mind for you when you think about a moment where an unearned, unexpected generosity fed you in some way. A gift from …

“I have grown tired of people speaking of God as if God were a deed folded in their coat pocket, creased and signed… I don’t understand these folk, the ones who carry God the way (people) carry canes they do not need – less for support than for pointing…. And always so sure. That is the wearying part. Not the speaking. The sureness….” ~ Matt Moberg (May 20) Poet Matt Moberg is weary of the “sureness” of people who view God as already signed and settled.  I get it.  As a child at Our Lady of Peace elementary school in …

One autumn day in 1963 I was roughhousing with some boys after gym class. I was a fourteen year old freshman at a Quaker school, just beginning my adolescent rebellion, frustratingly still one of the smallest boys in the class. That afternoon a much larger boy wrestled me to the floor and sat on me. There was no escape. I was stuck. I finally said “Let me up.” He laughed and stayed on top. I said, “Allan, let me up.” He wiggled his butt as though grinding me into the floor. “Get off me, you fat Jew!” Today’s lectionary is …

From very different perspectives, all three of today’s readings have to do with how to get along with each other. But one of them provides the foundation for the other two. The second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans announces that there is one commandment which, if you fulfill it, you get to fulfill all the other commandments. It’s a bit like a spiritual twofer, but it’s an “all-fer” – we can fulfill not just two commandments, but all of them, by fulfilling one of them.So you’ll understand why my reflections with you this morning are going to be …

How can we save our lives by losing them? Immanuel Kant wrote that whenever we are faced with an apparent paradox, that’s a sign that we are confusing truths on two distinct levels. And so it may be with the notion of saving our life by losing it (and losing it when we try to save it). The life that we stand to lose and the life that we stand to save are not the same thing. The Greek word translated “life” in our Gospel reading is actually psyche. The lexicon at the back of my Greek New Testament translates …

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. These are …

Maybe you sensed the urgency in the query Jesus raised to his disciples. He needed these companions to understand who he is. They must know him, first to learn, then, to inherit, his mission. That is: to Bring Good News to the poor and vulnerable of the land now called Palestine.He needed followers who would surrender their present lives to this mission; believers who would ” Be not conformed but transformed”.Scripture scholar Don Senior believed this passage of Matthew was the first explicit prediction of Jesus’ passion. He was ‘seeking the pulse’ of his followers’ understanding at that moment. Jesus …

We all know the parable of the wheat and the weeds.  And Matthew’s Gospel conveniently provides an interpretive guide.  So it’s easy to skim this teaching, and to float along its surface … assuming the meaning is obvious.  So obvious that AI can give you an instantaneous interpretation and I quote “God allows both good and bad to coexist in the world for a time.  Because human judgments are flawed, hastily attempting to root out all evil or false believers (the weeds) could result in harming the innocent.”  There is however ultimate justice: “Evil (the weeds) will not go unpunished …

Jesus sat beside the sea and he told them many things in parables “Listen!  A sower went out to sow…the reign of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in the field; but while everyone was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds…the reign of heaven is like a mustard seed…like yeast…a treasure hidden in a field…a merchant in search of fine pearls…a net thrown into the sea…” Between now and the end of the month as we move through the 13th chapter of Matthew we will be as inundated with parables about the reign of God …

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. These are …