Relating, Creating, Transforming
Mark 13:1-8 Did you ever skip rocks as a kid? Did you ever collect rocks on the beach or in the forest or near a stream? Did you ever climb a tall hill or a mountain and stand in awe of it? Have you ever been drawn to rocks? As a kid, I loved finding […]
Read More
Mark 10:46-52 Have you ever been shushed? You know what I mean. Has anyone ever told you be quiet, to silence your voice, bite your tongue, or even worse— Shut up! Sure you have. All of us at one point or another are silenced. Sometimes, we think it happens mostly to kids. You know, the […]
Read MoreMark 6:30-34, 53-56 A question for you, once again. Right now, in this moment, what do you want? Okay, a follow-up question. What do you need? It’s true, isn’t it, that what we want is often not what we actually need. Sometimes what we want is based on social conditioning. We want material things like […]
Read MoreMark 5:21-43 Triage [in medical situations] is the process of determining the priority of patients’ treatments based on the severity of their condition. Triage is meant to make treatment of patients more efficient when there are not enough resources for all to be treated immediately. Triage comes from the French word trier, meaning to separate, […]
Read MoreMatthew 21:1-11 Hosanna, Hey-sanna, Sanna, sanna, ho! I am conditioned at this time of year to hear that song and to see the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, because I actually saw the original Jesus Ted Neely perform in a live stage version a long time ago. For some reason, it stayed in my mind. […]
Read MoreJohn 11:1-45 Now look, I don’t know if you watch The Walking Dead on television or if you’re into zombie movies like Night of the Living Dead, REC, Dawn of the Dead, World War Z, or 28 Days Later. I am not sure if the idea of a once-dead human being rising from death to […]
Read MoreJohn 9:1-41 The Temptation, Hugo van der Goes, 1470 What is sin? Man, what a complicated question that is! Of course, there is no way to address such a question in a short time. But it will be helpful to start with the English word itself and work backwards. So let’s do some etymology of […]
Read MoreMatthew 17:1-9 On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a large crowd inside a church in Memphis, Tennessee. He spoke about the history of the struggle for civil rights in the United States and the difficult days ahead. Towards the end of his sermon, King raised his voice as he was known to […]
Read MoreMatthew 5:38-48 Question for the audience: How do you define perfection? If you are a student, think back to a time when you prepared that bit of homework so carefully. You worked very hard, you spent lots of time on it—you felt good about it. When you turned in your work to the teacher, you […]
Read MoreMatthew 5:1-12 How do you greet people? How do people greet you? It depends on where you live, of course. In Hawai’i, someone might approach you and say: How’s it? In Philly and South Jersey, I hear this a lot: How YOU doin’? Or, this: Whazzup? or What’s up, yo? Or the really short version: […]
Read More