Tag: Prayer

  • Jesus Doesn’t Teach Them How To Pray

    Jesus Doesn’t Teach Them How To Pray

    Let’s be honest. The disciples asked Jesus how to pray. How. Not what. How. Teach us how to pray! They ask him. Jesus responds to their request with “When you pray, say:” Jesus doesn’t teach them how to pray. Proper 12C  |  Luke 11:1-13 If we remember back in chapters 9 and 10, Jesus is…

  • Broken

    Broken

    The mangled parts of a red stroller strewn across grass and concrete a tire in the middle of the road and I pray to God no one was in it.

  • Prayers of the People

    Prayers of the People

    I try not to be a micromanager. Preparing our worship, inspiring, gathering, inviting into participation is a big part of what I am called to do as a priest. The training we receive in seminary is intended to give us a certain expertise. My writing training has given me certain skills (and ego) to lead…

  • Someone untimely born

    Someone untimely born

    Toward the end of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he wrote something that sounds a lot like this: I’ve given you something really, really important, maybe the most important thing that I’ve learned: Christ died because we sin. He was buried. Two days later he was brought to life like it says in our Hebrew…

  • Word obsessed

    Word obsessed

    Lately, though, words have begun to mean even more to me. Not simply because I write, teach, and preach as a priest or as a sentry posted to defend orthodoxy from the heretics. [That’s all nonsense to me, by the way.] But because our faith keeps coming back to words. Simply words. Having words. Words…

  • Do

    Do

    Jesus’s departing prayer incites a different kind of revolution Easter 7B  |  John 17:6-19   A Strange Prayer I might get into trouble for saying this, but please don’t pray like Jesus. If you take John 17 as your example and try to learn to pray like this, then, I don’t know if we can…

  • Holy Week Meditations

    Holy Week Meditations

    Holy Week stands out singularly in the Christian calendar. There is no time like it. One week. A time marked patiently with palms and crosses. For Christians throughout history, it has remained a meaningful time of deep devotion. A whole season to itself, just seven days, culminating in the most terrifying moment.

  • Make the Kingdom

    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…