April 1, 2012
Al Capone, the famous gangster – out of all the illegal things he did – was finally convicted of tax evasion (but we’re still two weeks from the tax filing deadline). Jesus, who has spent the whole Gospel of Mark making enemies, was finally betrayed for being worshiped. (more…)
March 31, 2012
When the Spirituality Committee asked for contributions to the “New Beginnings” bulletin board, one image I could have offered was The Cat in the Hat. Specifically, the last page of that book, when Things 1 and 2 have cleaned up the mess, the Cat has left, and the children’s mother is stepping through the door. The narrator ponders whether to tell his mother about the Cat’s visit, and the last lines ask the reader, “Well… / What would YOU do / If your mother asked YOU?” (Personally, I’ve never quite decided.) The story doesn’t quite end; it continues in the reader’s response to that question.
So it is with the stories of Holy Week and Easter. (more…)
March 25, 2012
Jeremiah 31:31-36; John 12:20-33
Jeremiah talks about God’s promise as a life-giving word written in us. It’s not just something we shouldn’t break, but something we essentially can’t break – it’s too deep within us. Jesus describes this deepest covenant as the life of a seed falling into the ground. He’s talking about himself, but it turns out that he’s also talking about seeds. The word of life is written deep within them, the instructions for making more seeds. Seeds don’t have to teach each other to sprout; “all of them, from the least to the greatest,” just know it. Wheat, lilies, even crabgrass, all have the gift of life deep inside them. We have that covenant too – the same kind of DNA is in us – in every cell, not just our hearts. The gift of life is in every bit of us. People, like all life, want nothing more than to grow, develop, and transform into what the Giver of Life made us for.
The difference is that the wheat kernel knows to die. (more…)
March 18, 2012
Meditation for Gospel Blues Sunday:
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
“The Tune,” by Larry Norman:
(as found on Mustard Seeds)
March 13, 2012
I know the other Scout law better, but former Girl Scouts, you can probably keep up with me here:
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
We’ll all use this as an affirmation of faith after this meditation. This is one of those things that gets drilled in at every meeting, so even when you’re past reciting it, you know it on a deep level. (more…)
March 4, 2012
I remember the 1980s move War Games, where a computer geek manages to dial into the war-games computer at NORAD, in the middle of the end of the Cold War.
After playing tic-tac-toe and chess, he and the computer try playing “Global Thermonuclear War.” The computer gets hooked on the challenge and plays over and over again, until it finally comes back with the response, “This is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” And of course that was true, and thank God that we haven’t played that game for real.
Jesus and his followers were living under the power of Rome. That’s a game that was built so Rome always wins, and the people always lose. (more…)
March 2, 2012
Today we hosted the local World Day of Prayer service, with the theme “Let Justice Prevail!” Thanks to all the women from all the churches that made this service possible.
Habakkuk 1:2-4; 1:5; 3:2; 3:17-19; Luke 18:1-8
That was a fairly unlikely conversion story, wasn’t it? The parable is about prayer, of course, as Luke tells us, but it’s wrapped in this story of a judge who doesn’t care. That is, a judge who didn’t care. Now he does. (more…)
March 1, 2012
When our office computers broke down a few months ago, we replaced the computer I use with a laptop. Along with giving me the flexibility to work at home or elsewhere more easily, the laptop has come in handy in a couple of other ways. In Food for Thought, we’ve used it to watch videos that must be streamed online, rather than recorded to a DVD. Last Sunday, when our network printer wasn’t available, I set the computer right on top of the pulpit for the worship service. Maybe technology doesn’t deserve bonus points for solving its own problems, but I can tell you I was grateful for the laptop that day.
There’s one more amazing thing this computer makes possible. (more…)
February 26, 2012
When we tell the Noah’s Ark story to kids, it doesn’t usually sound too much like Lent: a 40-day trial in the chaos. And our reading this morning seems to avoid that idea as well, because it fast-forwards to the end, with the rainbow that declares God’s covenant with creation. That’s the right part of the story, in a big way: the readings for this Lent are really about God’s everlasting faithfulness. (more…)
February 19, 2012
2 Corinthians 4:5-10; Mark 9:2-9
There are lots of reasons for the transfiguration story happening the way it did – the details of where Jesus went, with whom, what Peter said, and so on. Some stories go especially deep. One detail in particular matters to me today: the presence of Moses and Elijah. The lawgiver and the prophet stand with Jesus in this glorious vision and then get subsumed into him. Hebrew speculation about the end of time predicted that these two would come back to take part in the festivities. It was these two for the particular reason that they’re characters from the Hebrew scriptures who aren’t buried. Elijah was taken up to heaven in a flaming chariot (2 Kings 2:11), and Moses was buried by God himself, and “to this day no one knows the exact place of his burial” (Deut. 34:6). That is, unlike David, Abraham, or Adam, God still has access to them, because their bodies haven’t rotted away; even the ancients knew what happens inside graves. Essentially, these two show up because they’re not quite dead. They dodged the grave. This matters because death is real, and we know what comes next.
Jesus won’t be conquered by death either. Peter, James, and John get a preview of the glory in store for him. It’s a vision of the eternal, divine, all-sufficient Christ, and it’s fleeting. Not only do Moses and Elijah disappear, but Jesus leads his disciples down the mountain to a world still in need; to forces that are still deadly hostile to Jesus; to the grave that is still waiting. There’s work still to be done, death still to be faced, and that’s a key point: Jesus says that we can’t talk about the mountain before he rises from the tomb. Not “don’t talk about this until my chariot comes,” but rather “don’t talk about this until I’ve been tortured, killed, buried (that’s important), and raised in victory.” Whereas Moses and Elijah seemed to avoid death and the grave, Jesus lives a story that goes through it. (more…)
