Category Archive

Third Sunday of Lent March 3, 2024 Exodus 20:1-17 1 Corinthian 1:18-25 John 2:13-22 Well, it’s been a difficult few weeks trying to come up with something meaningful to say this morning about our readings.  It’s one of those times when there doesn’t seem to be any common thread that ties the texts together; or at least I couldn’t find one.  Faced with that fact, I found myself attracted to the passage from Paul’s letter to the Christ-followers in Corinth.  Still, after reading a bunch of commentaries on the text, and pondering and taking notes distractedly for many hours, I …

2/25/2024 • 2nd Sunday in Lent • Gen 17:1–7, 15–16 • Rom 4:13–25 • Mk 8:31–38 When Jesus gets stern like this, I like to think he’s just warning us about spiritual laws of nature that won’t spare us if we neglect to heed them. The spiritual law here is the paradox that “those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the Holy One, and the message of the Holy One, will save it.” What does this mean? In college, I was good at classwork but shy. Since I liked explaining …

Holy Wisdom Monastery The Transfiguration 2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9: 2-9 February 11, 2024 Roberta Felker (Peter, on the mountain) Not the light but how it spoke, his transfiguredflesh an instrument of consonance and discord.As if that were not enough, Elijah? Moses, too? James grabbed his knife. John stood mute, dis-figured by fear. And I? Well, some people act. Somewait, and then there are those who think out loud. Let’s build three sheds! I shouted, instantlyregretting it. What I meant was hold still, but my wordsnever come out right. When light stopped throbbing, tympani broke the sky. It …

Labels and names will be my focus today as we try to locate the “good news” in the scripture of the day. First off, labels and names are slippery and shaky. For instance, to the English in 1431, Joan of Arc was a heretic. But to the French, Joan was a martyr and saint. In our day labels and names are used to paint persons and groups into a societal corner so they can be better exploited by the powerful and wanna be powerful. For example, a person or group called a terrorist by one side might be called a …

The Authority of Love Engulfs Us Manato Jansen – 1/28/2024 Holy Wisdom Monastery I kind of enjoyed the daunting encounter with these scripture passages for this Sunday. They felt a bit all over the place. We start with Moses’s words of assurance to the Israelites at the end of his life that God will raise up another prophet who will speak the words of God. Then we read an entire chapter in the book of 1 Corinthians dedicated to the very contextual topic of meat sacrificed to idols in Corinth. Then, we read about how Jesus exorcized a demon in …

Homily: 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time  Jan 21, 2024 Somewhere back in grade school, it was impressed upon me and my classmates that every story has a beginning, middle and an end. Today’s readings present us with two beginnings (one of which is also an end) and one end (which is really a middle). In the gospel, we have Mark’s breathless description of the call of the first four disciples as Jesus begins his public ministry. In the reading from the first letter to the Corinthians, we have a middle, even though Paul thinks it is an end. But that’s …

January 14, 2024 Holy Wisdom Monastery 1 Samuel 1:9-18,20; 1 Corinth 6:12-20, John 1:35-51 Patti La Cross It is a lovely and rare treat to hear from John’s gospel today, and my privilege to be steeped in it for a time. I am of the opinion that this gospel ‘pairs well’ with a community like ours, this community of communities. It speaks well to the inclusiveness we treasure, our shared worship, values and leadership. Significantly, many of those Jesus encounters in this gospel are women – women shown as whole, complex, and utterly worthy disciples and leaders! In recent weeks …

Epiphany  January 7, 2024                            Homily   Matthew 2:1-12                                          Pam Shellberg                  Since the 4th century, the church has observed epiphany as a liturgical season, with gospel texts that manifest, reveal, unveil what the incarnation of God in Jesus means. If Christmas celebrates the fact of divine life come to us, the fact of God become human, the fact of God-with-us, then Epiphany celebrates the truth of us-with-God, unveils for us the divinity of our humanity in Christ, reveals the divine glory in which we and all creation dwell. Today’s gospel, which comes from the gospel of Matthew is read …

Most of our sisters and brothers in the Eastern Churches celebrate Easter today.  Let us be mindful of them, many of whom suffer spiritual turmoil along with physical deprivations and separation from loved ones. Our faith depends on the testimony of the first believers, Mary Magdalene, the other women, then Peter, James, and John, and others. In our passage today we hear the Gospel writer’s attempt to mark the transition from the last to see, to the rest of us. Attempts to squelch or squash or re-direct that testimony as we see in our first reading from the Acts of …

I’m not exactly sure why this night requires a homily because tonight is not so much about “words” as it is about “signs.” In some ways the whole service is a sign. Our readings point us in this way. Exodus spoke about the blood on the doorposts being a “sign” of God’s passing over and sparing the enslaved Hebrews from the wrath descending on the land of Egypt. In Paul’s simple words to the Corinthians we have the earliest reference in the New Testament to what we now call the “Eucharist” or “Holy Communion” and learn that bread and cup …