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Beyond the Ashes
For many, Ash Wednesday is a day of obligation. Others have no clue what it is. Its purpose is to open our hearts to change.
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Public Piety and the Pandemic
With or without the opportunity to have ashes put on our foreheads, we are invited to join in something important.
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Welcome to Lent
Lent, that season before Easter, is known for abstaining and fasting. But it is more than that. It’s a learning lab with a deadline. Lent as a 40-Day Love ChallengeAsh Wednesday | Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 Today is the first day of Lent. Like many Christians, all over the world, I got up and focused on devotion.…
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About the Food
We mistake the purpose of ashes – our symbol of mortality – for only being about death. They are also an invitation to life.
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Love Awakens
Another shooting, further proof of the dangerous social pathologies in the American body politic, could be just a number. But instead, it’s awakening the spirit of love long dormant and suppressed by fear and a narrow understanding of freedom. Last week, I had to write a new sermon. The gospel was about the beginning of…
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Facing Repentance
In Mark 1:9-15, Jesus reveals the mission of God, but another school shooting tests our resolve to see it, or to listen to his words of hope, saying that the time is now, kin-dom is here! A school shooting tests Ash Wednesday’s invitation to reconciliation Lent 1B | Mark 1:9-15 I had a really good…
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Ashes and Hearts – On Fire
Most of what we talk about on Ash Wednesday is found in the small part of the Sermon on the Mount we get in the lectionary (Matthew 6:1-6,16-21). The rest of the chapter reveals it means so much more. Ash Wednesday is way more than ashes – it’s the work of forgiveness Ash Wednesday | …
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How to Not Celebrate Valentine’s Day
It seems weird to mix Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. One’s the annual celebration of love and the other the annual reminder of our own mortality. But the two belong together more than we think. In 2018 we are fortunate to have St. Valentine’s Day land on Ash Wednesday. And the juxtaposition of the two…