Month: April 2017
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Third Sunday of Easter
[A sermon on John 10:1-15 …] Here’s a story I’m told is true: It’s about the Soviet foreign minister of the 1940s, Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was the kind of leader who would negotiate a deal with the Nazis to keep them out of Russian territory (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939), and would support that pact […]
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Forgiveness
Thinking about forgiveness this morning – why? Because we practiced “Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive” at choir practice on Wednesday? Because of trying to finish The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible for book group? For whatever reason, the thought unfolded something like this: Forgiveness – the act of forgiving another, the […]
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Exegetical Exercise – John 10 1-15
The Uniform Series text for Sunday, April 30 is John 10:1-15. This is the text (NRSV): “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. (2) The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of […]
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“Lux umbra dei”
Going through the mail that has been piling up for the past several weeks; skimmed through a publisher’s catalog (Paulist Press), and ran across the description of Home by Another Route: A Journal of Art, Music and Faith, by Charles Scribner, III; in the course of this, was introduced to the Latin proverb – evidently, ancient […]
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Second Sunday of Easter
[A sermon on the Uniform Series texts for April 23, 2017: Romans 5:6-11 & Romans 8:31-39] “God has it in for me.” Who has ever heard someone say that – or maybe even said it ourselves, at least half in jest, maybe when we’re having “one of those days”? The kitchen sink springs a leak […]
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Thoughts on “separation from love”
Here’s an additional thought on what, upon reflection, is a peculiar statement in Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:35) Where does this statement come from? How would hardship or distress or […]
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Exegetical Exercise – Romans 5 6-11
There are two texts in the Uniform Series selection for Sunday, April 23: Romans 5:6-11 and Romans 8:31-39. These are my notes on those texts: Background: Romans is one of Paul’s later letters, usually given a date in the late 50s CE; the longest letter (that’s why it’s first in book order, which is longest […]
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Easter Sunday
[A sermon on one of the Uniform Series texts for today, Sunday, April 16: John 20:1-10.] The church’s Easter greeting, for centuries, has gone like this: one says “Christ is risen!” – in whatever language – and the other responds “He is risen indeed!” We have been saying this for centuries, maybe almost since the […]
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Good Friday
When I was in our local nursing home/rehab facility recently, recuperating from a hip replacement and hoping to get all the feeling back into my left foot (still working on that), I had a hard enough time sleeping that I would leave the TV on in the room overnight … it helped, although I can’t […]
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Exegetical Exercise – 1 Peter 1 3-9
The Uniform Series text for Sunday, April 16 is actually two texts, John 20:1-10 and 1 Peter 1:3-5 & 8-9. Here are my notes on these texts: John 20:1-10 / First impressions: I can’t help taking a “real events” perspective on this text, thinking about how Mary Magdalene (or anyone, I) would feel in the […]
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Palm/Passion Sunday
“Whosoever” That word, “whosoever,” is emphatic: no one is excluded from “whosoever,” it’s unconditional. And I confess, it’s the one forever in my memory of John 3:16, a trace of the King James Version we memorized when I was a little girl: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, […]