This year, like every year, our  Palm & Passion Sunday Lectionary lesson runs three chapters long.  Most of us read the Bible, like no other book. We read verse by verse, parable by parable, story to story, pausing every few verses to ask God to speak to us from the Text. So in Mark’s eleventh […]

I grew up in a wing of Christendom that asked one question at the close of every worship service, and most every Sunday School class, and usually on youth hayrides: “Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” It is a good question perhaps too often neglected by the progressive wing of […]

Once upon a time a few thousand years ago, a family loaded into a worn out old van and began a journey from the south Florida orange groves to the Promised Land of Pasadena, California. Grandpa, stoic, grumpy, and decidedly old school, sat silently in the front seat fiddling with the maps. He only spoke […]

Marie Kondo leads a decluttering, simplification, or tidying trend that invites people to hold every possession in their hands and only keep objects that spark joy. Connie and I have largely managed to resist the tidying movement. Once-important furniture and rows of moving boxes ring our unfinished basement; some from our downsizing and some from […]

In Mark’s telling, Jesus is baptized, spends 40 days in the wilderness, and starts announcing the Good News of God’s Kin-dom in just eight verses. Mark fits Jesus’ baptism, temptation, and ministry launch into three tweets with a few characters to spare! The Baptism Tweet: John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. Just as Jesus […]

Through/throo/: (preposition) 1. moving in one side and out of the other side; 2. continuing in time toward completion of; 3. so as to inspect all parts of; 4. by means of.  “Jesus traveled through the cities, teaching, announcing the good news of God’s Kin-dom and healing every disease.” (Matthew 4:23 adapted) We have been […]

 Today’s Transfiguration sermon comes from 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9:2-10 & 2 Kings 2:1-12. Who do you say that Jesus is? The Transfiguration occurs six days after Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” After Peter names Jesus as the Christ, Jesus began to teach that “the Christ” must “suffer many […]

Will you imagine yourself inside Mark’s passage? It is evening. You are tired after a long day. The sun is setting, but the people keep coming. People are bringing friends who are sick or wrestling with inner demons to see you. The whole town crowds around the makeshift clinic’s door. You heal many who are  […]

In our passage the Deuteronmist deadpans, “Now, you might be wondering, how will we know which word God hasn’t spoken?” Who speaks for God? Our mainline churches, seminaries,  and denominational offices have given way to congregational authority. Progressives and traditionalists disagree about how to read scripture. Do the images of capital-storming, Bible-waving Christians shake our […]