Looking for more Lectionary Resources? Visit our Lectionary Page for a full Word from Below Index by  Liturgical Year, Week and Season as well as additional reflections and resources from our partners.

A Beautiful Cluelessness

I admit to a certain cluelessness regarding the transfiguration. After countless years of exposure to cleverly executed sermons, teachings, and writings by the best of our preachers, teachers, and scholars, I still don’t get what it was all about.

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Gathering at the Door

In last week’s passage, we saw Jesus exorcising bad religion as he cast out the “impure spirit” of a man inside the synagogue. The reflection challenged the traditional reading of the text. What if the impure spirit didn’t so much reflect the possessed man? What if it was actually a reflection of the religious authorities?

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Exorcising bad Religion

Jesus does not shy away from conflict in Mark’s Gospel. He turns and faces what most of us flee. In particular, he faces the religious leaders, who maintain the system that sorts people into clean and unclean. This makes the religious authorities nervous.

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Right Time Moments

During the season of Epiphany, I’ve committed to be more aware of the ways that God is present and at work in and around me each day.

Here’s a snapshot of what I’ve seen three weeks into Epiphany:
I performed two memorial services—both for young men in our community who died unexpectedly, literally leaving hundreds of people stunned and in horrible, excruciating grief.

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Da-n Straight That’s What I Am

I’ve rarely been called the n-word to my face, but I know what people are thinking. I’m a scary looking big dreadlocked 300-pound black guy who loves bench-presses and bicep curls. Racists tend to keep their biases to themselves or mask them in implicit language when I’m around.

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A New Year’s Rest-olution

John the Baptist appears in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and we are told that the “whole” Judean countryside and “all” the people of Jerusalem went out to him. It seems John has become quite the successful, suburban mega-church pastor with a huge commuter congregation. But he is clear that his show is not the best in town.

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Make Room

When the nativity tale declares, “there was no room at the inn,” I usually picture a robed man with a lantern sadly shaking his head “If you’d only gotten here sooner,” I imagine him saying, “I could have fit you in, but now, there’s no room.” But is this true?

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The Breath and the Glory

First it was an alarm, next came water and last week it was light. God uses each of these elements to wake us up. As we approach the eve of God’s arrival, are we still awake? Are we alert? Will we recognize the advent of our God?

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Light

I tried to sleep in a few weeks ago but failed to inform my children of this plan. My daughter came into the room and flipped the light on. “Ahhhh!” Pain shot beneath my eyelids…

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Awake in the Water

We would have called it the boonies or the sticks or perhaps BFE. Mark refers to it simply as the wilderness. Whatever the name, it was a place you didn’t so much go to as you went through. And yet, John made the desert a destination. People from the Judean suburbs loaded their campers and headed out.

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Stay Woke!

I hate to wake up. Yes, it beats the alternative, but it is so painful. The mattress, pillow, sheets and comforter offer such warm friendship while the cold, hard, dusty floor promises only pain.

Like a bully smacking his fist, the cold air waits knowing I have to pass by on my way home from school (or in this case to the bathroom).

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Pain as Gateway of Transformation

In one of my favorite Ted Talks, Educational Technology Specialist Sugata Mitra discusses his experiments with “Hole in the Wall” computers. These are computer kiosks left in Indian slums, among children with no prior contact with PCs. Mitra found that children, by pooling their knowledge and resources, learned how to operate the computers.

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Sheep or Goat?

God comes to us in what Mother Theresa called “the distressing disguise of the other,” in the face of the despised and rejected. That, in a nutshell, is the Gospel. It’s Word made flesh!

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Wait… God Did What?

If we view this parable through the lens of an honor-based culture, not a wealth-based culture, then this parable unlocks beautiful truth about where the Kingdom of God is located.

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Awake and Celebrate

Awake and celebrate! Is there a more elemental invitation of the Gospel of Jesus? In this week’s text Jesus tells the story of ten bridesmaids and a wedding party. Five of the bridesmaids remain awake and join the celebration.

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Re-formation

This week marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther famously nailing his 95 theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. The action brought attention to the rampant abuse inherent in the ecclesiastical structures of his day. 

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Nothing Else Matters

“Love God. Love People. Nothing Else Matters.” So reads a phrase on the many battered T-shirts stacked up in the back of my closet. I just don’t have the heart to discard them…

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Images is Everything

In this week’s text the religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus with a question about whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. But this isn’t really a question about taxes. It’s more sinister.

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You’re Invited

Stephen Curry, basketball star of the Golden State Warriors, said he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to visit the White House. He was hesitant due to the President’s statements concerning NFL football players and their protests during the national anthem…

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Should we have a Dream?

I’m told there is no utility in my delusions but yet I choose to imagine, envisioning a world of fellowship and joy. In this, my alternate global reality, wooden ships are ushered through placid seaways as steady breezes push against their ample sails, all adorned with the sacred symbol of the cross.

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Authority Remixed

At Street Psalms we embrace a particular perspective that invites us into a grace to see from below. We do…

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It’s Not Fair!

“No! No! No!” My two-year old son screamed as we drove down the interstate at seventy miles per hour. “I want the door open!”

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Why so Judgey?

One of the disciples poses a question that is essentially asking, “How much do we really have to forgive each other?” Jesus’ response, as was his habit, came in the form of a parable.

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An Absolutely Reckless Pedagogy!

In one of my favorite Ted Talks, Educational Technology Specialist Sugata Mitra discusses his experiments with “Hole in the Wall” computers. These are computer kiosks left in Indian slums, among children with no prior contact with PCs. Mitra found that children, by pooling their knowledge and resources, learned how to operate the computers.

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Harry

The camp speaker joined us in our cabin and Harry was on the edge, struggling with Jesus again. Harry had been to camp many times and each time he’d said “yes” to Jesus. Each time he meant it. And each time he returned to his neighborhood where the peaceful clarity of summer camp gave way to the reality of violence that eventually swallowed him up.

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Eucharist and Abundance

As we drew close to the church building, we noticed a structure in very ill repair. Windows were broken, doors unable to close properly, large stains adorned rugs and ceilings, and the arresting smell of strong body odor pierced our senses. We walked through the hallway toward the main worship space.

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Riddles of Grace: The Kingdom of God is Like….

The Jesuit Father, Anthony de Mello wrote that the shortest distance between a human and Truth is a story. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a variety of stories (parables) to describe the kingdom of heaven. We move from mustard seed (a weed) planted amidst a crop in a field to the image of yeast, to a treasure hidden in a field, to fine pearls and then, in perhaps the most striking of all, we are told that the kingdom of heaven is like a net (v. 47-48).

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The Wheat And The Weeds

There is a harvest of love happening in cities everywhere, if we can only see it. It’s an unusual harvest to be sure — one that sees good where we often see evil and reveals evil where we often see good. This harvest is the unveiling of reality. It is the work of the Spirit and God’s delight. When this liberating pattern is at work in our lives we not only suffer the humiliating shock of seeing things as they really are, we also discover the unspeakable joy of having gotten it all wrong.

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The Bad Sower

I look for God’s activity in my life through the very mundane things that occur each day. Today was one of those days.

I looked down at my cell phone when it rang. It was a number that I was familiar with. Whenever this number pops up, I have to make a few quick decisions: Do I have time to talk? Do I have the energy? At the most, it’s a 10-minute phone call.

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Dance to the Music

Poor Isaac, dying in a state of deception, betrayal, sorrow and loneliness. Yes, in our reading we encounter him comfortably ensconced within his mother’s tent, basking in the early hours of love at first sight, but things go very wrong by the time we get to chapter 27! There, the family of the patriarch is divided as rivals, Isaac and Esau on one side of the breach, and Rebekah and Jacob on the other. Can such soap-opera-caliber mess be the fruit of God’s plan for Isaac’s family: brothers at war over inheritance, Mom and Dad playing favorites among their children, lies, trickery, and deceit? In the end, fear leads Isaac to give his beloved Rebekah over to another man, an act that mimicked his father’s failures. Despite the moment of love and contentment we see in our reading, it seems this patriarch is destined to continue in family tragedy and community chaos, and to die in sadness and regret.

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Missional Hospitality: Blessed by Grace

Our Gospel reading this week draws from just three little verses at the end of an incredibly dense Matthew 10. The chapter is full of missional directives, which are bookended by the topic of missional hospitality we find in verses 40-42.

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Whispers in the Dark

Jesus whispers in the dark. As this week’s text suggests, it’s his preferred mode of communication. These covert conversations deal with the elemental essence of things; in that sense they are life-giving, world-changing and, yes, quite dangerous. The whispers are dangerous because they uncover secrets that have been “hidden since the foundations of the world” (Matt. 13:35). These secrets are killing us, which is why Jesus says, “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known”(v.26).

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Breathing With The City

Lenny leaned securely against the darkness of the night. His jet-black figure perfectly matched the evening’s moonless flesh. It was much too late for socializing but there he stood, on 6th Street, gazing toward Ferry Ave., as I made my way home after dropping guys off from midnight basketball. After three hours of ball with fit and speedy teens, my legs and back showed my age; I needed to get home quickly for rest and pain relievers…but there was Lenny, poised in the solitude of the dark empty street. My reputation could not survive the slight of passing without shouting out to him, but I feared being dragged into 6th & Ferry’s continuous drama. Risking a delay in my homeward journey, I lowered the window of the well-worn ministry van and yelled, “Yo Lenny! What up man?”

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The Great Commission(s)

The command to “go” and to “make” disciples has defined Christianity for centuries and has probably been one of the most formative parts of our Christian narrative. We are supposed to share our faith. We are supposed to lead people to Jesus. We are commanded to “go and make.” Period.

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Commencement

For many in the United States, the end of May is full of graduation parties for aspiring high school seniors — a transition into a new life as adults. While exciting, for student and parent alike, the season can also be filled with fear and doubt.

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The Crime Scene

Imagine the victim of a violent crime asks you to return to the scene of the crime-a crime that you were (in part) responsible for. Now imagine that this experience becomes the animating center of your life, which, despite your dread, fills you with great joy, and clothes you with a power that transforms you and the world. This is the miracle we celebrate in the final week of the Easter season as Jesus ascends into heaven.

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The Promise of Presence

Since my father passed away some years ago, I’ve had a fascination with the last words and days of a person’s life.

My father struggled with lung cancer–breathing was a chore. Every breath he took was measured, had meaning, and was intentional.

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The Queen of 8th Street

With a quick glance at Taina’s bushy hair, one knew they had entered a wholly unique experience. As other students sat awkwardly on secondhand office chairs, Taina perched herself high against the opposition, sitting like an 8th Street Queen, atop one of the secondhand computer desks. The African, the Arawak, and the Taino all met at the center of Taina’s cute, baby-like face. But one should be warned that her charm and her bushy ponytail belied her true nature as a warrior queen. Taina was determined to stay one step ahead of a system determined to vanquish all within her realm and to hold them under the grip of common ghetto oppression.

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Shadowlands or Pastureland

Street Psalms leads a collaboration of 13 training hubs (UTC) in cities around the world; together, we seek to develop incarnational leaders who love their cities and seek their peace. We have a strong sense of what UTC Hubs are called to do on a communal level. But, we can sometimes lose sight of where we, as individual leaders, are guiding people to on a personal level.

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Open Our Eyes to the Stranger

Here at Street Psalms, our most transformative experiences have happened while walking the streets with urban leaders (“on the road”) and fellowship around a meal (“breaking of the bread”). This week’s lectionary text highlights both the road and the table as gateways to Gospel sight.

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From Back to Front

The Christian story begins at the end, at the resurrection. It is by the light of the resurrection that we begin to see what’s really happening. Until then, we are shrouded in what T.S. Eliot calls “hints and guesses.” It’s only when we see through the eyes of the risen Christ that we begin to make sense of Jesus’ life and our own.

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Maundy Thursday

It’s Maundy Thursday. We are entering the passion of Jesus by way of the love Jesus shows us today: a love that frees us to fail, desert, betray and still be called friends.

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Ishmael, Isaac, and Palm Sunday

Between 1979 and 1981, twenty-nine young black people fell victim to a serial murderer in Atlanta, Georgia. I don’t know any of their names. I do have the name of JonBenét Ramsey indelibly sketched in my mind. Unlike the black children in Atlanta, JonBenét was a white American child of promise; thus, obsession with the drama surrounding her murder swept the nation in 1996. As news ratings soared, and reporters gained new levels of fame, those of us in ghettos across the nation pointed frustratingly to the contrast in the coverage of these two tragedies.

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Freedom from Fear

We trudge along this Lenten season towards the horror of the cross. Just two weeks away, Good Friday marks the day when the shadow of death will completely shroud us in darkness and despair. As the body of Lazarus lies entombed, wrapped in the grave clothes of death, we find ourselves also shrouded in darkness, wrapped in the grave
clothes of sin: fear reigning in our hearts.

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The Judgement of Mercy

The story begins with the disciples speculating theologically on who is to blame for a certain man being born blind; they are convinced God is punishing him. Jesus refuses this interpretation and heals the blind man…an act that “divides” the unstable community; he robs them of their scapegoat. Blinded by their own dim judgment, and in an effort to preserve the status quo, the community “drives out” the healed man from their midst.

Jesus follows the exile to the margins where the two of them establish the possibility of a new community, one founded upon mercy, not the blind guide of sacrifice. This is the “judgment” for which Jesus came into the world-the judgment of mercy.

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Why are you talking to me?

This is what I thirst for-bold proclamation that Jesus’ interaction with those who are marginalized, including women, is on the front edge of God’s Kingdom work. Worshiping God in Spirit and in truth includes telling the whole truth about a God whose conversations begin in the margins. Jesus empowered a Samaritan Woman to do this “telling” of the Good News.

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The Transfiguration of a Skinny Geedy

Geedy was just one word in the neighborhood’s descriptive lexicon for crack cocaine addicts. Sometimes called fiends, geezers, crack heads,…

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Wilderness Wander – Setting out from where you are

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew 4:1-11 After an…

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Don’t Speak Until You’re Spoken To*

After the brightly lit meeting on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, where Jesus is transfigured, he orders the disciples…

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Becoming Perfectly Human

I use to think that the Sermon on the Mount was easy and beautiful. I use to think, “yeah Jesus,…

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A Happy Baptism

Denise stood nervously at the edge of the deep end of the Herman’s scandalous inground pool. I saw her out of the corner of my left eye, never imagining her plans.

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Salt and Light

This past Sunday morning I attended a unique worship service with some friends. It was called “Street Church;” all the…

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The Inauguration

We are told that the three most important words in real estate are: Location! Location! Location! I don’t think God…

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What About Church Out Here?

One Sunday afternoon, I was driving through the neighborhood with a car full of local kids that were a part…

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What’s in a Name?

I ask people, especially young people, about their names. I fill up with joy when Maisha tells me her name…

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The Word in the Temple

We’ve had a week to digest the Nativity Feast. The magic of Christmas finds its way into even the most…

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The Word Revealed

  Joy is the purest form of gratitude, and gratitude is the most genuine gift we can give to God….

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The Word at Home

We began this year’s Advent series by exploring The Waiting Rooms of Christmas. We waited in the Apocalypse and peace…

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The Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Public Disgrace

We began this year’s Advent series by exploring The Waiting Rooms of Christmas. We waited in the Apocalypse and peace…

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The Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Prison

This year, during Advent, the Gospel of Matthew invites us to sit in what we are calling The Waiting Rooms…

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The Four Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Wilderness

This year during Advent the Gospel of Matthew invites us to sit in, what we are calling, The Waiting Rooms…

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The Four Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Apocalypse

  40“Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left…41Keep awake therefore, for…

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The Way of the Cross?

“Build that wall! Build that wall” “Go back to where you came from.” “Pack your bags! Pack your bags!” On…

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Stone by Stone

This week’s text is difficult. It is the reminder that peacemaking is not for the faint of heart. The text…

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Children of the Resurrection

The Gospel not only empowers us to see, but to see from a particular vantage point-through the unconstrained eyes of…

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Zacchaeus: A Wee Little Man Was He (Not)

This week’s Gospel text is a narrative some people grew up singing in Sunday School: “Zacchaeus was a wee, little…

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Superhero Spandex

Superhero movies are all the rage recently. I’m sure there are a variety of reasons why…such as an affinity for…

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Faith from Below

This is a familiar parable Jesus uses to teach us about the nature of prayer. The widow shows us what…

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Becoming Human

This week’s text is a difficult one. The disciples want Jesus to increase their faith, which is the very thing…

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Not Even Abraham

This week’s text is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lives a life of plenty,…

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The Gospel Hustle

In my neighborhood, this would be called a hustle. I see it every day. This parable sounds like a contemporary…

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The Math of Mercy

Fifteen years ago this Sunday (9/11) something awful happened, and I do mean aw-full. Most of us were filled with…

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Invitation of Love

Throughout the course of life we often engage Scripture through the lens of present circumstance. In my case, the engagement…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 6

As we mentioned four weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead,…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 5

As we mentioned four weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead,…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 4

As we mentioned three weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead,…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 3

As we mentioned two weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead,…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 2

As we mentioned last week, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead, we…

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Sabbath Prayer:  Week 1

Each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead of writing on the Gospel lectionary…

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The Mystery of Mercy

We can manage moral purity from the “other side” of the road, but mercy “comes near” and gets involved in the mess of life.

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First Say Peace

“First say, Peace to this house.”

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Family Matters

In this week’s text Jesus turns toward Jerusalem where he will confront the brutal reality of sin head on. On…

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Seized By Fear

The man in the tombs we see in this passage is tormented by demons that will not go away. They…

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A Gospel Turning

The Gospel is alive and well, but there is an exodus from the Church in North America. My hunch is…

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Tita felt led to lead weekly prayer walks

Clash of Crowds

A collision at the city gate!! A crowd of death is leaving the city while a crowd of life is…

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The Marvel of Saving Faith

There are only two places where the Bible tells us that Jesus is amazed. In our lectionary text this week,…

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Love in Motion

This week we celebrate the Trinity. Cynthia Bourgeault describes the Trinity as “love in motion.” Love in motion is the…

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Pentecost Unity

This week we celebrate Pentecost, which some call the birthday of the church. The Spirit is “poured out” on all…

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Unity Without Enemies?

My favorite scientific experiment is the one conducted by Mark Twain. He placed a cat and a dog in a…

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Do you want to get well?

As we approach the sixth Sunday of Easter, we are continually being challenged to see life by the light of…

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Seeing the New Jerusalem

The poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “That only which we have within, can we see without.” If we see hope,…

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Dis-appointment?

Have you recently been disappointed by someone, or have you been the source of their disappointment? In a week’s time,…

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What It Means to be Eastered

“Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” These are the words that English Jesuit…

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Resurrection Sunday

Christ is risen! This week we have tried to recover some of the shock of Holy Week and the truly…

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Holy Saturday

Today the world falls silent. The psalmist says there is no speech and there are no words. And yet in…

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Good Friday

In the Beginning, on the sixth day, on the very first Friday, God created humanity and called us “very good.”…

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Maundy Thursday

The result of these next four days ultimately becomes the hope of the world. But today, just today, I want…

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The Gift of Shattered Expectations

Laying down cloaks was an act of homage for royalty. By riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey,…

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Inventing Scapegoats

We are approaching the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Things are heating up. This week Mary anoints Jesus with costly perfume….

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Scandalously Wasteful: The Prodigal Dad

We continue our trek this Lenten season toward the Cross and our journey this week takes us into a very…

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