It says in the instructions for today for pastors that “a long sermon might not be desirable.” I do, though, want to say a few words about why this Sunday has two names. But I’ll keep it short. Actually, I’ve made the same promise over the past few years, and each sermon comes out about the normal length. But this time, I really mean it.
Read MoreDream on. In your dreams. You live in a dream world.
It is a cynical and scary time right now, and in times like this, dreams and dreamers are mocked. Yet we have to dream.
Read MoreToday in the time reserved for the reading of the Gospel and the sermon we are going to do something a little different. We are going to mix the reading with a dramatic reflection of what’s happening in the story. We did this three years ago, and we are going to try it again today, because it seems to me that it puts the dynamic of the story in relief.
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Read MoreThe Bible looks like one big book. But it really is a library, a collection of stories told and then written over centuries, and finally assembled into one official version. The writings themselves hardly ever existed as complete works that some scholar could just copy down. Most of the source materials for the books of the Bible are small fragments, sometimes just a few lines. They come from dozens and in some cases hundreds of separate documents. Often they disagree: one document has words in a passage that another leaves out. Scholars try to put all these fragments together to make coherent books, which together make the library, the Bible.
Read MorePreacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg
Two weeks ago Pastor Tim Seitz led us in a wonderful reflection about the Transfiguration and the importance that the actual journey–a difficult mountain hike—played in the impact of that story. Last summer I had a chance to experience that first hand when I visited Ostrog Monastery in Montenegro. I knew the monastery to be a holy place for the people of the region, but I didn’t really know what to expect. So I was surprised when I piled off the bus in a low river valley only to find the monastery nowhere to be seen. “Gde jest?—Where is it?” I asked a fellow pilgrim. “There,” he pointed to what appeared to me to be a very small white dot up a very steep mountain slope. Several hours and about 6 miles later we emerged hot and dusty, scratched and sore, onto a ledge where awaited a veritable paradise. Cool and ancient, the monastery beaconed us to enter and be refreshed. Inside, we found paintings and candles and pools of water where thousands of pilgrims before had washed their tired feet. It was only later that I reflected on how much the power of that experience was formed not just by the monastery itself but the ardor and struggle of the journey.
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Read More[Editor’s note: Pastor Stein did not preach this week. This is a sermon on the same Gospel passage, preached in 2004.]
In the classic movie Buckaroo Bonzai, Peter Weller plays the title character. Buckaroo is a surgeon, a physicist, a comic book hero, and a rock star. Actor Lewis Smith plays his partner, lieutenant, and fellow musician. His name is Perfect Tommy. He is perfect. Able, cool under pressure, good looking, brave, decisive. There is something especially appealing about the notion of this man who is able to avoid the imperfections that otherwise put sand in the works of the lives of normal people like us. But of course it is fantasy; the man is made up. As in action-adventure movies of every era, he is the projection of our enthusiasm at the possible and our frustration with the actual.
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Read MoreThere are two kinds of people in the world.
There are those who are poor, and those who are rich. There are those who are hungry, and those who are full. There are those who weep, and those who laugh. Is that right? Is that what Jesus is saying here? Are there poor hungry weepers and rich stuffed laughers?
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Read More“They left everything.” That’s what Luke says. In the Gospel of Mark, from which Luke borrows freely, it says “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” It amounts to the same thing. Immediate and total change of life in a single instant. Simon (we know him better as Peter, after Jesus renames him)—Peter and James and John leave behind all that they had and all that they had thought they hoped for. In a single moment, and everything at once.
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Read MoreWords matter. They are not just ways to label the world. They influence how we see the world. What categories we have for things. How we perceive things, how we perceive time. People—like advertisers or politicians—try to put words in our brains so that we will see the world and our place in it in a particular way. When we see things, we attach them to categories we already have words for. New ideas take a while to take hold because they either demand new words or new ways of using old words.
Read MoreJesus came bringing good news. But not everyone agreed the news was good.
This speech of Jesus we just heard are the first words of his ministry, following immediately after his baptism and his temptation in the desert. As a reader in the synagogue, he is given or chooses a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It is a song of hope and trust and change for the better for a beleaguered people. After hard times, good times are ahead. An anointed one—which is what the word messiah means—has come, called to proclaim good news. A time of restoration (Isaiah adds that “they will raise up the former devastations, they will repair the ruined cities.”)
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