May 12, 2024 - The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Lectionary Readings

Keep us in the fellowship of your love, O God. Amen.

            If you were to walk around downtown and randomly ask people what Christianity is all about, what do you think they might say? If you try it, let me know what responses you get. Surveys suggest that we’d probably hear some “it’s about following Jesus,” a few “it’s about loving God and your neighbor,” as well as some “it’s about eternal life.” As Episcopalians, I suspect that we’re good with the definitions that include Jesus and love, but are less certain about the focus on eternal life because of the exclusionary aspects of those who focus on that. As we are concluding reading through the letter of First John in Eastertide, eternal life is precisely what this letter is building towards, as we heard: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

May 9, 2024 - The Feast of the Ascension

Lectionary Readings

Give us your continual blessing, O Lord, that we might be empowered to proclaim the grace and love of your name to the whole world. Amen.

            Ask any author, director, gymnast, or preacher and they’ll all tell you the same thing – endings matter. If you don’t stick the landing, points will be deducted. I often tell my preaching students at Hood Seminary that the majority of their creative planning in crafting a sermon needs to go into the conclusion. Yes, the introduction matters, but the conclusion is what people remember and either gives the people a handle to take the sermon with them, or the sermon just evaporates into a bunch of “sound and fury signifying nothing.” As we celebrate the conclusion of Jesus’ incarnate and earthly ministry on the Ascension, we see how Luke ends the Gospel narrative.

May 5, 2024 - The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Lectionary Readings

Keep us in the fellowship of your love, O God. Amen.

            Ask my kids and they’ll tell you that if you really want to push my parenting buttons, do what I’ve told you not to do, or don’t do what I did tell you to do. To be clear, my unrealistic and selfish need for obedience is something I work on both in therapy and spiritual direction, and I pray that I’m making some progress. What makes obedience such a bad thing to expect out of other people, whether they be children or adults, is that the expectations that we put on other people do not enable them to meet the expectations, rather they are burdens. Nor should we assume that our standards be normative for others. In reality, the standards we have for ourselves are rarely reasonable or healthy, so why should we impose those on others and expect their obedience? It’s no wonder that obedience has become such a negative word in our culture.