It’s all about the meals, according to New Testament scholar Robert Karris. In his book “Eating your Way through Luke’s Gospel,” he points out that Jesus almost always seems to be either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. And in the Gospel we just heard, Jesus is teaching about … Read the rest
Continue reading "Dangerous Eating" »
I grew up with the lyric “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” etched in my memory. That reference surely dates me, although I confess that I was a pretty small child when my parents were playing Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” on our home stereo. My parents were themselves … Read the rest
Continue reading "Running with Saint Jonathan" »
As a child growing up in a house of many books but little religious instruction, I was fascinated by our remnant collection of Bibles, mostly squirreled away in obscure corners of dusty shelves. We were like the statistically average American household that owns 3.6 Bibles per reader, but nobody ever reads them. I wasn’t sure … Read the rest
Continue reading "Commissioned to Cross Boundaries" »Easter Vigil 2019
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I do not long for resurrection. I am generally much more comfortable with death staying in its predictable tomb. And I’m pretty sure that same sentiment was true of the spice-bearing women who came to anoint the body of Jesus on a Sunday morning so very many years ago. They knew what to do … Read the rest
On Thursday I posted a complaint on social media that I was late in preparing my sermon. When I’m preaching I try really hard to be ready before my husband John comes home from San Francisco, because I like to save weekends for him. But this wasn’t that kind of week—everything seemed to take more time … Read the rest
Continue reading "Eye to Eye" »
If you’ve been around Trinity for a while, you may already know that my husband John and I served for seven years as missionaries in Central America and the Caribbean when we were newly married. Por eso somos hablahispanos. That’s why we’re both Spanish speakers. What you may not know is that our two sons … Read the rest
Continue reading "Light for the Journey" »Several decades ago, at a time when I was thinking very deeply about God and money, I went to my then Presbyterian pastor and asked her what to do. “What’s the right amount to give to the church?” I wanted to know. Should it be a tithe, a tenth of my income? That seemed like … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Look of Love" »
It was about this time last year, when I was on the search for air conditioned outings—as one does in the summer in Portland—that I found myself at the Pompeii exhibit at OMSI. Perhaps some of you visited it as well? It was a breathtaking installation, at once intimate and cosmic in scale. There were … Read the rest
Continue reading "Cloudy Insight" »As some of you may know, I recently spent two weeks with about 10,000 of my closest Episcopal friends—including our own Alan Murray—in Austin Texas at the 79th triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Alan was an alternate deputy for our diocese, so he had a legislatively official reason for being there. I … Read the rest
Continue reading "Awkward Episcopalian" »Listen to Audio
“Come, let us go across to the other side,” said Jesus. And they did. With no apparent purpose. Even though it was evening, and a storm was afoot, Mark didn’t bother to report any objections from the disciples. As far as we know, they were eager to embark on a dangerous boat trip to the … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Crossing and the Storm" »
