Relating, Creating, Transforming
Romans 13:8-11a Matthew 18:15-20 Sell your crap. Pay your debt. Do what you love. This was the title of Adam Baker’s TED TALK in 2011—the story of how his family moved away from being the “typical” debt-laden U.S. family trapped by the next thing to buy to a family that envisioned freedom from that debt […]
Read MoreMatthew 16:13-20 I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, over the last few months. I’m taking my time. It is a book that I think people who identify as Christians should most certainly read. It took Ehrman, a NT scholar, eight years to research […]
Read MoreMatthew 15:10-28 This week I was taking with a guy I know who works in a store that I shop in frequently. He and I always have funny or interesting conversations. This time, we were joking about his nickname and his favorite superhero, and then, he told me an unexpected story that I will now […]
Read MoreMatthew 14:22-33 The Hobbit, a book by JRR Tolkien, begins with this line: “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” The author Tolkien lets us the reader know that this is not a nasty or unkempt hole, like the lair of a mouse, but rather a cozy place, filled with fine furniture, […]
Read MoreMatthew 14:13-21 MIRACLE. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: 1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs 2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment Not sure what you consider to be a miracle. Does it have to be something religious—something related to a god or gods? Does it have to be […]
Read MoreMatthew 11:16-19; 25-30 Can you sense when you are in a heavy environment?Do you recognize when the environment is light?How do you know? In our Gospel story today, Jesus of Nazareth is getting impatient. He seems to compare the behavior of the people around him to children bickering back and forth. Na, na, na, na, […]
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 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 5:21-26; 33-37 -Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at St. Louis, 1964 Money is the root of all evils: poverty is the fruit of all goodness. Rumi, 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. I am showering you with antitheses. But […]
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