Lectionary Readings: Year A – Sixth Sunday in Easter One of the things my friends and I in college liked to do was to use fake church names that let people know that rather than going to church we instead decided to stay at home. You’ve probably heard a bunch of these. “Oh yeah, today…
Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. – 1 John 2:18 When I was growing up, one of the things that seemed to be on everyone’s mind was this notion of the Antichrist, since, according to some big names, Jesus was coming…
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…
I know everyone is familiar with Superman, and his alter ego, Clark Kent. One of the late night television shows did a spoof on this once. Clark Kent is sitting at his desk at the Daily Planet, and he takes his glasses off to rub his eyes, and someone yells out, “Superman! Wow! When did you get here!” And Clark puts his glasses back on to look around for Superman, and the person goes, “Huh? Where did he go? He was just here!” Clark gets wise, and pulls his glasses off again, and the person yells, “Oh! There you are!” What follows is Clark Kent taking his glasses off and on, with people seeing Superman, and then suddenly blinded to his presence the moment Clark puts his glasses back on. They thought Clark kind of looked like that Superman guy, but obviously, Superman didn’t need glasses, so it couldn’t possibly be him. They doubted what was right in front of them, and so they were blinded to reality.
But, before we can continue with this storyline, we need to talk about the disciples, who come back at the most awkward moment. They’d been buying food, you see, and now when they show up, they have the shock of their lives. Just like the woman was shocked that Jesus would speak to her, the disciples are equally shocked. What on earth is Jesus doing, talking to this woman?
Now, I know you might be wondering why I’m talking about sausages and phrases that started out in the 1600s but evolved into something else over time. After all, isn’t the Gospel today about this famous conversation with Nicodemus about being “born again?” Doesn’t it include the famous line, “For God so loved the world?” What’s this about pudding?
Jesus preached hope, compassion, and living simply and generously. The fact that some people want to reject these words of Christ and try to rewrite them into something they find more acceptable should make all of us question what is going on with the state of our union as followers of Christ.
When I did my first baptism as a priest, we had a minor crisis. As I poured water on the baby girl’s head, she began to cry. That’s when I realized that the water was cold. She did not stop crying until we were able to get a blanket over her head again and warm her up. At my second baptism, I tried to avoid the same mistake, and, because we were renting a community hall at the time, I heated up some water on the stove in the kitchen, and hoped that it wouldn’t cool off too much before the service. Just before the baptism, I checked the water, and it was a beautifully nice temperature. When I began pouring the water over the baby girl’s head, guess what? She began to cry. I decided that there were probably two explanations for this: 1) baby girls don’t like me, or 2) baby girls don’t like having water poured on their heads when they are comfortably resting in their mothers arms, half asleep. I prefer the second explanation.
Lectionary Readings: Feast of the Holy Name Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. As was custom in the Jewish culture, all male children were circumcised on the 8th day, and were also given a name. Now, we know that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream before Mary gave…
The parable is concerned with how we understand justification. Now, in theological terms, to be justified means to be “righteous in God’s eyes.” And, justification is the word we use to describe how we become righteous in God’s eyes. That is, the word justification is all about what God sees when God looks at us, and this word – justification – is interested in explaining what it takes for any of us to become righteous in God’s eyes. How do we get there? How do we end up looking good to God?