-
·
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…
-
·
Approaching Jerusalem: Palm Sunday
“When they were approaching Jerusalem” Read the text: Mark 11:1-11. When Jerusalem is involved, we are reminded of its fractured history. Its division. Its failure. We even see Jerusalem as a source of emotional (not just literal) pain for Jesus. We are so taught to approach Holy Week with dread. That we might look past “Hosanna!”…
-
·
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…
-
·
Jesus the Snake
An alternative homily for Lent 4B | John 3:14-21 It is an odd place to begin the story: with the snake. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The lectionary cuts off the…
-
·
The Worth of Life
Bad News, Good News, and Life Itself As much as Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for teaching harmful stuff to the people, Jesus is opening up the very nature of life and death to them: That, of course: what lies ahead is awful. Of course none of us wants to do this. And yes, I…
-
·
Make the Kingdom
What Ash Wednesday tells us about what Jesus really wants. It is a time of wrestling with weighty issues of faith and of community; of justice and of the nature of GOD. To wrestle and prepare one another for greater unity. To heal the broken, to care for the weak, to help flip over and…
-
·
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…
-
·
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…