Tag: Matthew 5

  • Choose to Love

    Choose to Love

    Or How to Build the Blessed Community This is an honest question. How many times have we heard a Christian, a follower of Christ, a disciple of Jesus say “an eye for an eye”? A lot, right? These are among the least surprising words to come out of Jesus’s mouth or the mouths of any…

  • Reconsider

    Reconsider

    For the last month or so we’ve been talking about what goes into a new beginning. With baptism, we’re invited to begin again. And with it, we’re invited into following Christ, face adversity, respond, and claim our purpose. Today, we focus on one of the least appreciated parts of our journey. Where we wrestle with…

  • On Purpose

    On Purpose

    Drive What drives you? What gets you out of bed in the morning and puts one foot in front of the other, stumbling to the coffee pot? You get up and you move. I wake up and I drink water and shower and dress and get my kids to school. I don’t want them to…

  • Respond – The Beatitudes bless us in seeing

    Respond – The Beatitudes bless us in seeing

    I don’t know what the disciples expected when they followed Jesus up the mountain. Maybe a great wisdom. They hadn’t been following him long. They visited a few cities in the region. So they were just getting to know the man. And he goes up the mountain. They follow. And he unveils the very dream…

  • Unchristlike – how retaliation stains the Anglican Communion

    Unchristlike – how retaliation stains the Anglican Communion

    Word has come tonight of sanctions on the Episcopal Church. This week, primates are gathered for a highly irregular meeting. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby is trying to hold together a divided church. He is failing. And before it began, many knew it was already lost. Lost, not because it is actually over. It isn’t. Far from…

  • Blessed To Make Peace

    Blessed To Make Peace

    For our darkest hours Jesus gives us a vision of the Kingdom of GOD and the blessed community. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the…

  • 5 Things I loved about Wild Goose

    5 Things I loved about Wild Goose

    We finally made it to Wild Goose. After the last four years saying “I really wish we could go,” which became “let’s give it a try,” which became “we’ll go next year.” It finally became “we’re going!” We just got back from the Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina this weekend. Rose and I…

  • On Perfect Christians

    a Sermon for Epiphany 7A Text: Matthew 5:38-48 Rebelling against Jesus You’ve probably seen this phrase on a book cover or on a church sign. It reads: “no perfect people allowed.” Kind of catchy, isn’t it? We don’t want perfect. We don’t really want to be perfect, do we? The phrase also has a sly…