“Laughing at or Laughing with” Laughter can be a connection between people. It can lower our defenses and build relationships. Laughter can signify delight and wonder and joy. But laughter can also be defensive. It can be derisive and it can be a weapon. It can bring distance rather than closeness. The Genesis story of Sarai’s laughter when God promises…
Holy Interruptions “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” And what if faith is how we respond to those surprises that life throws our way? Can we live with such openness of heart that we encounter God in the unexpected and disrupting experiences of our lives? We’ll be celebrating and blessing our graduates this week as they get…
Always and Everywhere Finding God – Trinity Sunday The Sunday following Pentecost is Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the Triune nature of God. We will definitely not fully understand Trinitarian theology by the end of worship! But we might open ourselves up to the presence of a God who is both more magnificent and more intimate than we usually believe.…
Breath and Life The day of Pentecost comes with lots of holy hullaballoo: the sound of a rushing wind, tongues of flame, a cacophony of languages. And in our Pentecost worship we also bring a lot of flash – songs written for the day and bright colors. But, really, the noise of Pentecost is secondary – the real promise and…
“Dinner with Each Other” In the story of the Emmaus encounter (Luke 24:13-35), Jesus is recognized in a familiar moment – sharing a meal. But what about us? How do we, living 2000 years after Jesus, encounter the Risen Christ? We have something to learn from the early Church: Christ is encountered as we share community (and dinner!) with one…
Dinner with Jesus The Resurrection story of the journey to Emmaus invites us to consider a question: how is it that we recognize the Risen Christ? Cleopas and his companion walk beside Jesus, talking to Jesus about Jesus, and somehow do not recognize him. At least, they don’t until they share a meal and recognize Jesus as he blesses and…
“Doubt, Certainty, and Faith” On the first Sunday after Easter, we often hear the story of Thomas after Jesus has died and then appears to the disciples. Over the centuries, because of this story, Thomas got nicknamed “Doubting Thomas,” though the Gospel writer never called him that. What if we looked at this story with fresh eyes? What might this…
Kings of Many Kinds: Palm Sunday Palm Sunday begins our Holy Week as we journey with the disciples of Jesus through the last week of his earthly life. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is a celebration of Jesus’ kingship, and a foretaste of Jesus’ triumph over death. But it is also a warning – many of the same crowd that…
All Around, Every Day: Greg Boyle, Las Patronas, and Saints Everywhere We misunderstand sainthood if we imagine it’s about a few exceptional followers of Jesus doing extraordinary things. As Paul reminds us, the saints are all of those who commit themselves to the Way of Jesus – loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. As we wrap up our…
Voices from the Fringes Voices that come from the fringes of our faith can be easy to ignore. After all, aren’t the important voices the ones that we all know? But sometimes those voices from the periphery are vital. We’ll learn a little bit from the Desert Mothers of the 4th and 5th Century, and hear the story of Public…
A Discomforting Gospel Sometimes we find comforting saints as companions for the spiritual journey – the people whose stories resonate with ours, who inspire us, and who we think “They’d be fun to meet!” And sometimes we encounter the prophetic saints of the Church, the ones who stand on the fringes of acceptable society. And they can make us uncomfortable.…
Resisting Empires Two saints of the 20th Century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero, offer us a challenging perspective – that faithfully following Jesus will often put us in conflict with the powers of the world. We might be tempted to withdraw from the world to keep ourselves safe, but these two servants of Christ show us another way – learning…