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One Week: Finding Jesus in our approach to Holy Week
Palm Sunday | Mark 11:1-11 Learning Holy Week I must have been 9 or 10 when I realized that the story didn’t make sense. I could follow the main elements of the story. I could make sense of the basic plot points. But there were holes. And the way we told it just confused…
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Wishing to See
Learning in the absence of Jesus Lent 5B | John 12:20-33 Wishing to See “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” It is a deceptively simple moment. We’d almost overlook it. These people come to Philip looking for Jesus. Philip goes to Andrew and they both go to Jesus. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” they…
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Not Afraid of the Dark
Banishing the fear that shrouds the light of Christ Lent 4B | John 3:14-21 In the Dark of Night When we pulled up to the bus stop this week in the inky-blue of morning, we found ourselves at the back of the line. A small handful of 3rd or 4th graders rule the stop and…
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Tearing Down the Temple
Jesus’s call for the end of faith as we know it Now, Jesus isn’t pushing us toward a churchless faith, a religionless spirituality, or independent devotion. Jesus doesn’t attack the institution because it is an institution but because the leadership of the existing institution is corrupt. Because how they understand scripture is corrupt. Because the…
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The Beasts and the Angels
How Jesus’s time in the wilderness reminds us of our own journey. So this thing we call The Temptation of Jesus isn’t really about temptation, or about the Tempter or about GOD and the problem of evil at all. It’s about experience, creation, and GOD. It is about living in this world that GOD has…
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In the Middle
The Transfiguration, Peter, and how it feels in the inbetween. The middle, the hinge point in Mark is the end of chapter 8, when Jesus tells the disciples what is about to happen to him and to the movement, and the beginning of chapter 9, when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain. This is the…
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The New Authority
Jesus shows us why our ideas of power are only half right a Homily for Epiphany 4B | Text: Mark 1:21-28 Authority Today’s story about Jesus leaving the seashore and heading to the synagogue to teach is obviously about authority. It says so. Twice. But it gets a little complicated. Yes, it is about authority…
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Called to Transformation
How Jesus calls us to act now to do something audacious, in spite of ourselves, precisely because GOD is audacious a Homily for Epiphany 3B | Text: Mark 1:14-20 Calling I love these call stories: these stories of Jesus calling the disciples to follow him. I think they’re pure gold for us. They may not be…