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Blood and Light: seeing, revealing, saying
a Sermon for The Presentation Text: Luke 2:22-40 Embarrassment and Injustice I was in the fifth grade. I’m not sure why I was out of my classroom and standing in the hall. Maybe I was feeling sick and waiting to be picked up. The front door to Ella White Elementary was near the office. A…
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Jesus Offends Us
John the Baptist is locked in a cell, full of doubt, wondering what the whole Jesus experiment is really all about. He is left questioning everything. What is my role in this? Was I wrong? What he’s really thinking is this: Jesus isn’t the Messiah. This Sunday’s gospel is Matthew 11:2-11, and just in case…
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Peter Jumps Into the Water
This week’s gospel from John 21 deals with nudity, miraculous fishing, and redefining love. It is a jam-packed resurrection appearance that only could be delivered by that incredible gospel we call John. One part sticks out for me this week. And it obviously deals with Peter. So the disciples are fishing. They are hanging out.…
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Two Questions About Jesus
a Homily for Proper 19B Text: Mark 8:27-38 Jesus has it rough You have got to feel for Jesus. It was so long ago that he was baptized by John in the Jordan and he took up GOD’s call. So long since he gathered His disciples two-by-two. He has been teaching them so very long…
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It’s All About Winning
a Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, B Text: Mark 8:31-38 This is Winning? “Jesus saves.” A pithy and precise statement if ever there were one. Jesus Saves. He does. But how? From what? It is a statement too simple to be accurate. Jesus is Messiah and Liberator, Conqueror and King. But every image…
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Whose son is he?
Proper 25A Matthew 22:34-46 In this corna! Weighing in at a paltry 135 pounds of emaciated flesh, Jesus of Nazareth! And in this corna! Weighing a combined 1,600 portly pounds, the Pharisees! [Booooo!] For the last few weeks, we’ve been dealing with this sequence in Jerusalem in which Jesus is tangling with the Jewish leadership.…