Relating, Creating, Transforming
Baruch 5:1; 7-9 The Inclusive Bible Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. For God has ordered that every mountain and the ancient hills be made low and the valleys lifted up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk […]
Read More
If you haven’t seen the Netflix original show Stranger Things, I highly recommend it. I won’t give a full synopsis here, but even if you are not familiar with it, I think what follows will still be relevant and hopefully meaningful. Let’s talk about friendship. In Stranger Things, friendship takes center stage. It is set […]
Read More
John 20:19-29 We are all unique and thus, the ways we see the world vary. There is one thing, however, that we can all probably agree upon. At some point, all of us have had moments when we doubted. You know what I mean—it can even be simple. You are in the grocery store and […]
Read More
John 20:19-29 The tomb is still empty. Really, it is. The peeps have been eaten [or at least mostly eaten], the baskets emptied of their sugary substances and plastic grass, and the Easter egg hunts are a distant memory. It’s the week after, and the tomb is still empty. In Luke’s Gospel story, a group […]
Read MoreJohn 20:19-31 The movie Philomena is based on the 2009 investigative book by British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC] correspondent Martin Sixsmith, entitled, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Philomena Lee, played by Judi Dench, is an older woman searching for her long-lost son. When Philomena was a young woman living in an Irish-Catholic community, she gave […]
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 MoreIsaiah 11:1-10 I thought that there was no better way to start a message and conversation about peace than to hear from the late Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela who died at the age of 95 this past Thursday, December 5th. His life and work are a testimony to what real peacemaking looks like. And that is […]
Read MoreLuke 12:49-56 Last Sunday an unexpected visitor came to the church building. Twenty-four years old, he had the courage to drive to the NE suburb of Warminster all the way from Philly to walk through the doors of a strange church only seeking a conversation. As a consequence, my meeting was interrupted. I was pulled […]
Read MoreJohn 14:23-29 Graduation! It’s that time of year. Students will be graduating from high school, college, graduate school—it’s a major milestone in their lives. It is the result of a lot of struggle and hard work; the facing of challenges and the overcoming of obstacles; times when they thought they wouldn’t make it; graduation is […]
Read More