Scripture: Luke 4:1–13
We begin a journey of “discovery” in Lent, as we seek to know ourselves more fully as God’s own. Jesus spends time in the wilderness with the deep hunger to know more fully his own calling in the Spirit, and resists the temptation to be someone else altogether.
Scripture: Luke 9:28-43
Three disciples have a mountaintop experience with Jesus as the Son of God… but what makes it a “Jesus Experience” is that he returns to offer healing to another son, and another father. How do we do the same so that “high” church meetings actually show Jesus’s ministry and life?
Scripture: Luke 6:27-38
We ponder “The Golden Rule” in Luke’s gospel, how Jesus invites us to make foolish the oppression of empire and tyrants, and what favorite Harry Potter spell might free us from the quagmire and cycle of violence.
Scripture: Luke 6:17-26
Jesus begins a sermon on a “level place” by inverting the heights and depths of the world around him, showing the blessing available to all, and the woe of those who seek “safety” in the heights of separation from others. In a sermon in which Jesus is so direct about the challenges of wealth, how do we react? How do we “spend” our lives?
Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
Jesus calls fishers into ministry that is full of life, but carries risk and tenderness. In a long history of prophets, can we say out loud the excuses we would love to use, but instead finally overcome them with love?
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
A letter to a church invites them to ground everything they do in love… which is harder than it sounds, and invites us to imagine a “mindfulness of love” in all our work and witness.
Scripture: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
We celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, recognizing that it does not promise us still waters, but it does offer us the promise of our own beloved-ness, that we might bring that reminder to the world…
Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12
The Feast of Epiphany arrives with wise ones “from away” inviting us to ponder how we encounter the holiness of other traditions and other travelers, living into the deep mystery of what Christ’s incarnation means for us as Christians, and for our relationships with all creation.
Scripture: Luke 2:41-52, Colossians 3:12-17
It’s Christmas-tide, and so we get a rare story of Jesus growing up, and wonder how he learned to be himself, and to hear God’s call on his life. Identity development and deepening never truly stops, though, and like the ancient church at Colossae, we wonder how we might try on new gifts, clothing ourselves in the Spirit as we discover who we truly are as a people of God, and as we share that gift with the world.
Christmas Eve Reflection 2018
There is a song we sing on this Holy Night of Christmas that is not quite like the others. This year “Silent Night” is 200 years old, but it remains a part of our traditions and our cosmic telling of the Christ-child’s birth because it connects us to a tender moment of incarnation.