John 2:13-22 My Anglican heritage is especially preoccupied with sacred spaces. At our gatherings it looks like it’s all focused on a sort of table. But for us it’s not just a table. We behave very differently around this table. Every time [...]
Mark 8:31-38 Peter has just told Jesus that he must be the Messiah, the Christ, God's Anointed. Instead of congratulating him, Jesus shocks Peter with prediction he can't handle. “OK, you say I'm God’s Anointed. Well, here’s what’s in store for your [...]
Mark 1:9-15 Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn’t bother to tell us about any of Jesus’ particular temptations. All Mark says is, “he was tempted.” Other Gospels give some examples, but Mark is making a different point. After all, our Church has [...]
Service for Ash Wednesday (online here) The very name for this day focuses on “the imposition of ashes”—the moment where the minister dips a thumb into the ashes and traces the sign of the cross on the worshipper’s forehead. It can be [...]
Mark 9:2-9 This last Sunday in Epiphany, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, is also Transfiguration Sunday, where we celebrate the time when Jesus positively glowed for a few of his disciples on a mountaintop. (Yeah, it happens to be Valentine’s Day too [...]
Mark 1:29-39 Jesus relieves Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever, and then later that evening he brings healing to all kinds of people—people with physical ailments, and people in the grip of powers we don’t always understand even today. Mind you, not everybody [...]
Mark 1:21-28 When Jesus stood up to teach in the synagogue, he shocked everybody. His listeners were used to having a teacher go through the scriptures verse by verse. Jesus didn’t do that. He told them about the arrival of God’s new [...]
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Suppose you see this headline on your news feed: "Vegan Convinces McDonald's to Stop Selling Hamburgers." The story follows: "A shabbily dressed man burst into the food chain's shareholders' meeting shouting, ‘Eating meat is murder!’ The shareholders and CEO [...]
Psalm 139 With everything that’s happening this week (who knows what else by the time you read this?), I’d like to focus our attention on a portion of Psalm 139 that is NOT scheduled to be read this Sunday. (The lectionary version [...]
Mark 1:4-11 John the Baptizer had been praying for God to step in and take over the world. And this is how his prayer got answered: Jesus showed up and followed an upside-down script. Instead of taking over the world, he let [...]