The fifth Sunday after Epiphany continues to highlight unlikely instruments and circumstances appointed to reveal God’s glory. “Who will go for us?” God asks. A person of unclean lips, a former persecutor of the church of God, and three fishermen who couldn’t catch a thing. More surprising still, perhaps, is that we are also called.
The Sundays after Epiphany continue to celebrate the revelation of God’s glory to us as it was made known to the magi and to those on Jordan’s banks at Jesus’ baptism—this week using wedding imagery. Our God rejoices over God’s people as those being married rejoice over one another. By the power of the Spirit…
Can we pray the way Bartimaeus prays? People try to hush him up because by addressing Jesus as “Son of David” he is making a politically dangerous claim that Jesus is the rightful king. Could our prayers ever be heard as a threat to unjust powers that be? Bartimaeus won’t give up or go away…
This week we continue to focus on gospel readings illustrating Jesus as the “bread of life,” and recall God’s sustaining power when he fed the Israelites “manna from heaven” as they wandered in the desert. We’re reminded that God also sustains us in our own personal “deserts” when we gather for the Word and the…
Today is the first of five Sundays with gospel readings from John 6, the first four of which focus on Jesus as bread of life. Today Jesus feeds thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. What we have, what we bring to Jesus’ table, seems like it is not nearly enough to meet…
On this Mother’s Day, we are reminded that God shows no partiality and we are all one in our baptism into Christ Jesus. We abide together in God’s love.
I had planned to preach something else this evening, but while I was reading my emails, I came across a statement by one of our pastors who was announcing the decision to cancel a conference meeting. He said this was being done because of the “unprecedented situation that we are facing in the struggle with COVID-19.” As individuals, I suppose he is…