Category Archive

The apocalyptic literature in the scripture readings of recent Sundays caused me to recall a children’s song I heard on many long car trips, “Are we there yet?”  “Are we there yet?” “How much farther do we have to go?” Well, we are at our destination, the last Sunday of the liturgical year.    We call it the Sunday of the Fulfillment.      Thanks to AI, I learned the meaning of “fulfillment”.           In business, fulfillment is the complete process of receiving, processing, and delivering a customer’s order to their specified location. It encompasses all steps from when a customer places …

When the wall between the worlds is too firm, too close. When it seems all solidity and sharp edges. When every morning you wake as if flattened against it, its forbidding presence fairly pressing the breath from you all over again. Then may you be given a glimpse of how weak the wall and how strong what stirs on the other side, breathing with you and blessing you still, forever bound to you but freeing you into this living, nto this world so much wider than you ever knew. Jan Richardson: God of the Living-A Blessing from The Cure for …

You aren’t alone if these readings strike you as fairly threatening.  Malachi’s “burn up the arrogant and evildoers” is further than I’d go when pushed, though at times I may hope for some “creative divine intervention.. Of this constellation of Scriptures, Walter Brueggemann once wrote: Either the world is about to crack, according to these texts, or God’s rule reigns!       The warnings Malachi put out seem to have been aimed at an indulgent, greedy Jewish priesthood – and all who would cheat the poor, even sell them as slaves.  Men who cast off their wives to marry foreigners also earned …

Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going?” Fayan said, “Around on pilgrimage.” Dizang said, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?” Fayan said, “I don’t know.” Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.” This Zen Buddhist teaching story has been rattling around in my mind for the last couple of years, particularly the punch line:  Not knowing is most intimate.  I think it goes to the heart of our ongoing efforts to live a shared life of humility, hospitality, compassion, and care–care for ourselves, for one another, for our society, for the earth.  All of these aspects of our life are …

This morning’s gospel reading from Luke is tremendously difficult and would be so much better dealt with in a classroom or a formal bible study. And even in those spaces we’d be in for a hard slog. Many biblical commentators consider it one of the most difficult parables. My clergy friends say, “this gospel doesn’t preach.” So today we, like Jacob, are going to really wrestle with the Holy One. We will probably all walk out limping. But if we let the parable do its work, we might leave with a blessing, too. Parables were Jesus’ way of “teaching” – …

Last month marked fifty years since my ordination.  I’ve been doing this for a long time! As I prepared this homily it occurred to me that I have been preaching for even longer. I think my first attempt was on a so-called “Youth Sunday” in my hometown Iowa church as a high school kid. And, Lord, have mercy, I had a student parish assignment during my seminary years in Dubuque. Those gentle souls in McGregor, Iowa must have been very patient and tolerant with their wet-behind-the-ears, twenty something preacher. Over the years of my ministry, first in United Methodist churches in …

Biblical scholars have pointed out that the words I just read from Luke’s gospel are a combination of the Q source image of mustard seed faith and the fig tree image in Mark’s gospel which Luke changes into the largess of the mulberry tree. So I’m going to take Luke’s freeing spirit of literary license to explode that image of the mustard seed faith Jesus gives us into the theme of Jesus calling us to a mustard seed life. A mustard seed life entails an understanding that small things matter, small actions matter; small, small details of our daily life …

You cannot serve God and wealth. Not just because of divided loyalty, but because the two require entirely different mindsets. Serving God comes from a place of letting go, listening, and entrusting. Jesus was serving God. At the end, he could very likely have saved his skin by recanting all the sabbath healings and the controversial message of liberation and inclusion. That recanting was the ransom demanded by the rulers and chief priests clinging to their worldly wealth and power. Jesus did not pay that ransom. He chose to let go of his very life rather than break faith with …

The scriptures for our consideration this morning, particularly the verses from Deuteronomy and Luke, have an instructional or didactic tone to them around their shared focus – the path of faith or the spiritual journey.   In Deuteronomy, we encounter powerful verses issued at a critical time for the Israelites as they stand on the brink of entering the promised land. It is considered Moses’ farewell speech in which the Israelites receive the instruction that they have a choice to make. Faith is not imposed by a dominate deity who takes away their autonomy and agency. No. This undertaking is initiated …

The preacher in Ecclesiastes & Jesus are challenging us to ask ourselves: Is life about possessing? The vanity, and yes the frustration of trying to possess life is, as the preacher writes & as Jesus says, foolish! But that doesn’t prevent us from trying to possess life rather than simply live life in the present. Maybe you live with a Godly indifference to possessing, grasping, or seizing life? I don’t do that hence these scriptures are a real gift! They so richly contrast our foolish desire to possess life instead of being rich toward God….Jesus’ words of challenge which ended …