Posts Tagged ‘11th Sunday After Pentecost’
Room for the Impossible
This week’s lectionary text contains some thoughts that make me feel a bit nervous. I think of the fact that in doing something relatively easy in the name of Jesus we can come face-to-face with nightmares of opposition. Powerful gusts of wind can batter our most sincere efforts. Thundering waves overwhelm our hearts, sweeping away our motivation. Dense darkness and blinding uncertainty about tomorrow — a feeling of being lost without knowing where you are or where you are going.
Read More18 Long Years
I have an 18 year-old young person in my life; they have not had an easy go of things. This person recently graduated from high school, which was a touch-and-go situation. They haven’t had a stable home environment for all the years I’ve known them. And they are rarely ever, what I would describe as, “happy” — it’s almost as if they don’t trust themselves to experience happiness.
Read MoreThe Transformation of God
Filipino Muslims are our closest siblings, yet we are divided by our differences and a lack of trust. We were not prepared to address this lurking and lingering issue. We walked, as it were, down the road Jesus describes in his parable, asking whether we would continue to affirm the ossified lines of our identities, or transcend that which divides us?
Read MoreEven the Muscle Dudes’ Knees were Shaking
Like Peter, like Edwaan, and like so many of us, there is a longing for belief out on life’s “danger waters” — those places removed from the placid nature of peace and plenty. Persecution, pain, and tragedy inspire deep longings, often taking the shape of foolhardy propositions such as Peter’s, “Save me in these dangerous waters or watch me die.”
Read MoreInduction to Reality
If this is true, the Lord’s Table is not simply a ritual performed on special occasions in clearly recognized “sacred settings” – though it is often exactly and beautifully that. Like Jesus’s “I Am” statements, including his statement about being the Bread of Life, a sweeping universality is held in the particularity of this Meal.
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