Posts Tagged ‘4th Sunday After Pentecost’
PROPER 6 (11) – Year B
Mark 4:26-34
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,
4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.
4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.
Read MoreThe Trouble With Uncovering
Jesus was not a violent disruptor. That much is abundantly clear in his life and teachings. Rather, he was a disrupter of violence—both interpersonal and structural. By no coincidence, he died by violence.
Read MorePeace – It’s Getting Complicated
The call to peace, in all of its complex, costly, extensive, nuanced layers, is now feeling rather akin to a call of vulnerability. It is the vulnerability that strikes me in this week’s lectionary reading. Jesus sends out his disciples, two by two, to bring this costly, complex, extensive message of peace to foreign villages, unknown houses, strange countrymen.
Read MoreA Whisper
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
Read MoreBeing Sent, Being Received
All of these refugees are our sisters and brothers, daughters and sons of our loving God just like we are. They, too, are a part of the Body of Christ. Most of them, if not all, have probably been baptized, and by virtue of their baptism, they are sent – sometimes by direction, other times by desperation.
Read MoreWhispers 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).
Read MoreFirst Say Peace
“First say, Peace to this house.”
Read MoreA Gospel Turning
The Gospel is alive and well, but there is an exodus from the Church in North America. My hunch is that it has something to do with the fact that,…
Read MoreRiding the Waves of the City
I spent my formative childhood years in wilderness. Every day prompted a new foray into the woods with my dog Bessie leading the way. This was actual wilderness, not the national kind with streams of visitors. Bessie and I were the only outsiders; our hosts were cougars, bobcats, coyotes, bears, owls, skunks, and rattlesnakes.
Read MoreMy Well-Fitting Yoke
Your fully human self will suit you just fine, Jesus’ story says. Check in the mirror, you’ll see!
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