[RCL] Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8 In the tradition of oral storytelling, there is a notion that when a story is written down, it ceases to be the living, changing thing that was passed down from one storyteller to the next. In oral tradition, the story is alive in the imagination…

[RCL]: Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8 Any of us might have had an experience like the persistent widow in the Gospel reading from Luke. If you have ever had to deal with an insurance company or a government agency, like the DMV, or in some cases even a child’s school or…

Brother Geoffrey Tristram of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE) Episcopal Monastery in Cambridge, MA witnessed profound spiritual healing in Cairo, Egypt. Brother Tristram noticed a man kneeling before the altar at Saint John the Baptist Coptic Church. Two others flanked the kneeling man with their hands on his shoulders. Seventeen others stood…

In North America, the railroad gauge – the distance between rails – is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. A strange number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s how railroads were built in England, and English expatriates designed the American railroads. But why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were…

Today’s psalm, Psalm 119, gives us 176 ways to say the same thing: “Happy are those who walk in the way of the Lord,” and “Oh, how I love your law!” and “All the day long, it is in my mind.” At 176 verses, it is the longest of all psalms. It consists of 22…

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” — Genesis 32:26 We often hear Jacob’s name in church. He is third in that list of three patriarchs whose names identify the God we are worshipping: “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and sometimes we add “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”…

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the prison camps of Siberia. Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The…

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about an unjust judge and a poor widow woman. Like all parables, this story has more than one layer of meaning. It was intended, Luke tells us, to remind the disciples about the need for persistence in prayer and in their lives. An obvious interpretation when reading this…