“Thank you for being a friend…” The Golden Girls had it right: friendship is everything. Jesus takes his disciples to another level by calling them not just students or servants, but friends. Friendship captures the love, the joy, and the deep mutuality of the relationship Jesus invites us to experience. And true friendship, true love, […]
New life cannot be stopped as the season of Easter continues. We hear about Jesus as the vine and us as the branches, called to bear fruit for the good of all. We hear about a gentleman who struggles to find his place in God’s house and hears words of grace and welcome. We hear […]
Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We’ve probably all seen the images of a well-groomed Jesus in an idyllic landscape, cuddling an impossibly clean and fluffy sheep. Guess what? That’s not what being a true shepherd, a good shepherd, is all about. It’s hard, smelly, gross and dirty work, which is exactly why it’s good news […]
Sharing a meal with Jesus and hearing the scriptures are the two main elements of our worship service every Sunday. Both happen in our gospel reading today. Jesus and his disciples share a breakfast of broiled fish while he explains to them the meaning of his suffering, death and resurrection. In fact, the gospel for […]
Hiding behind locked doors after the tomb was found empty, Jesus’ disciples wondered what to do next. They were at a dead end until the risen Jesus came and stood among them and breathed peace into them. Our world also hides away behind locked doors of fear, prejudice, anger and violence. Can Jesus breathe peace […]
Christ is risen! Jesus is alive, and God has swallowed up death forever. With Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, we may feel confused, afraid, terrified, unsure of what to make of the empty tomb and the promise of new life. But this is why we gather: to proclaim, witness, praise, and […]
This day is intense as we pivot from triumphant shouts of “Hosanna” and palms in Jesus’ parade to look towards the somber events to come later this week. In the middle of these stories we hear about the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus as a prophetic act before he is crucified. Her unconventional gesture of […]
We all have moments of heartbreak in our lives. It’s part of being human. But when our hearts are broken, it is like the turning of soil in the spring to be planted with new seeds and the hope of something new. Jesus tries to explain his coming death and resurrection using the image of […]
Sometimes the Bible is just flat-out weird. Our readings today include a strange and mysterious story of poisonous snakes with the Israelites in the wilderness and a strange and mysterious conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus at night. The thing that causes sickness and suffering in these stories is transformed into an agent of healing. […]
What’s hiding in your closet? The Ten Commandments call us to trust that God will provide all things that we need. Therefore we don’t need to spend our whole lives accumulating more. When Jesus throws the merchants out of the temple, he is cleaning house, defending the worship of God alone and rejecting the ways […]