Every single one of us has heard the story – some of us probably hundreds of times. We know what’s going to happen by the end of the story, so we don’t think about it much anymore. The mystery has faded, and the excitement at the mystery of the incarnation – the death and resurrection – seems to have dried up as well.
Because of this, it’s hard to put ourselves into the minds of these women in the Gospel – the two Marys.
Lectionary Readings: Year A, Holy Week, Good Friday In 1883, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared “God is Dead.” You’ve probably heard the phrase thrown about when discussing atheism, because Nietzsche is saying that God is just a social construct used to justify all sorts of evil and violence. If you read his work, you…
Have you ever had a moment in your life where everything all came crashing in at once? Not in a bad way. Not like things in your life were falling apart. But that things all came together in one single moment, and everything made so much sense – a true sense of clarity – that you could no longer understand or look at things the same way again.
As I looked at the Gospel reading for today, I was torn with all the directions that a sermon could go. The Gospel is about Joseph, Mary, and Jesus escaping the violence of Herod’s jealousy, as he seeks to kill the child Jesus. They escaped through a dream that Joseph had, and which protected him and his family. And then, the gospel concludes with another dream in which Joseph is told that it is now safe, and that he can bring his family back to Israel. And then again, yet another dream warns him not to go back to Bethlehem, but instead sends him off to a town called Nazareth.
Lectionary Readings: Year A, Fourth Sunday of Advent Can you imagine the scandal that could have happened in a small town, if Joseph had made a public spectacle about this little issue with Mary? That she was pregnant before their wedding day, and that he, Joseph, was not the father? Everyone in that town would…
Advent has been called a mini-Lent, because it is also a season of penitence. The difference between Lent and Advent is that during Lent, we prepare for Christ’s crucifixion (and then resurrection), while in Advent, we prepare our hearts for Christ’s birth, and in another sense, for Christ’s Second Coming. Accordingly, Advent, while still a penitential season of preparation, is more joyful than Lent because of the anticipation of something new, something greater than ourselves, something that sparks hope for a better future for all God’s children – through our work, and our gifts that allow us to care for all, guided by the love that God has showed us.
But that doesn’t mean that Christ’s activity has come to an end. Instead, toward the tail end of the Season after Pentecost, we begin to hear these passages that speak about the end of days, and what needs to happen before the return of the King. These passages of scripture teach us about how we are to live our lives even during the tumult and torture at the end of the world as we know it.
In the movie, Forrest Gump, some bullies are throwing rocks at Forrest as he’s talking to his friend Jenny, and so she tells Forrest to run. But there’s a problem, because Forrest wore braces to correct a problem with his spine. And so he stumbles off, trying desperately to run, even though the leg braces…
The first thing that popped into my head when I was preparing this sermon was a scene from the old classic Princess Bride. The hero of the story has been killed, and Fezzik the Giant and Inigo Montoya take him to Miracle Max, a man who sells miracles, and gives them a giant pill to…
As I was preparing for the service today, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sermon that was the equivalent of Teddy Bears skipping through alpine meadows picking wildflowers and making bouquets to give to people?”
“I wonder what the Gospel for this week says…”
Hypocrites! You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me!