March 31, 2025: Isaiah 65:17-25 Psalm 30:1-6, 11-13 John 4:43-54
Water into wine, death into life: what extraordinary transformations! In John’s Gospel, these miracles are called signs. And I think that’s actually more descriptive language to describe what Jesus was up to. Miracles were called “signs” because they were intended to point beyond themselves, revealing Jesus as the bearer of God’s … Read the rest
Continue reading "Miracles & Signs" »
Are you poor? Are you sad or hungry or feeling unworthy? Are you persecuted? Well then, blessed are you. Enjoy all your blessings!
Do Matthew’s beatitudes leave you just a bit uncomfortable? Blessings might a great reward in heaven, but—let’s be honest here—these earthly attributes that apparently bring about heavenly blessing are kind of hard to bear in … Read the rest
Continue reading "Bless Your Heart" »
It’s commonly been said—although evidently never by Albert Einstein—that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I’m guessing you’ve heard that saying: it’s a kind of a secular Gospel in a place like Silicon Valley, where disrupting business as usual IS business as usual.
That principle has been … Read the rest
Continue reading "Catching and Mending" »
Ten lepers healed. Shout about that miracle from the rooftops! In an age of readily accessible medicine, it’s easy for us to forget the high cost of sickness in Jesus’ time. So let me bring it home to you: leprosy, which might have described any number of painful and debilitating skin diseases, would also have been cause for … Read the rest
Continue reading "Thankfully Healed" »
What our church calls “the season after the Epiphany” comes to a conclusion this Sunday, and next Sunday we’ll enter into the deeply reflective season of Lent. This morning’s readings, in the spirit of all things Epiphany—whose season is all about the revealing of Christ’s identity—include two stories of awe-inspiring mountain events. One is about Moses’ encounter with … Read the rest
Continue reading "Transfiguration & Today" »
Whew. This gut-wrenching Palm Sunday story, dramatically read by our deacon and his family, reads like a catalog of provocative questions and defamatory statements about Jesus’ identity. At the outset, Pilate asks Jesus if he is king of the Jews, and then the Gospel ends with a centurion proclaiming “truly this man was God’s son.” In between, … Read the rest
Continue reading "Chaos into Quiet" »Epiphany 1A/Baptism of Our Lord
Last Sunday on the Feast of the Holy Name, my colleague Marlene preached about the importance of letting go of names that no longer suit us. So in the three months since I’ve moved here from the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve been practicing a new way of naming myself: Oregonian. I’m actually the fourth … Read the rest
Continue reading "Leveling Up to God" »
For years I have carried the memory of a sermon in which an Episcopal priest posed the question of why we don’t anoint people with indelible oil. That is, when we are baptized—marked as Christ’s own forever—why isn’t the mark more visible? The obvious answer to this rhetorical question being that the visible sign of our identity as Jesus-followers ought … Read the rest
Merry Christmas!
If you happen to have been here Christmas eve—I was, I go to church a lot—you might recall that yesterday’s readings and pageant were all about shepherds, angels, and the baby in the manger. The familiar—if peculiar—story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is a tale of wonder and courage and extraordinary generosity on the part of … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Stable and the Supernova" »It’s the tears that really get to me in this story. Everything that the woman does is unexpected: the bold entry into the house of a Pharisee, the weeping, the anointing, the contact with the rabbi’s feet, the loosened hair. The reality and the symbolism of each of these actions is quite extraordinary. Even more so if we … Read the rest
Continue reading "Tears of Pain and Power" »