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Have you ever thought about holy temples? A temple is usually understood to be a place where religious services are held. The Bible is full of references to the temple in Jerusalem. Most of us know of synagogues today that are called temples. Some Protestant churches are occasionally called temples. The Mormons use the term…
Today’s lessons are wonderful — Job, Psalm 107, 2 Corinthians and Mark. They are all about relationship with God — listening to God and responding to God — experiencing God, experiencing the wholeness and fulfillment and gladness that comes from that relationship. Let’s look at Job first. God finally speaks. For page after page, conversation…
Have you ever had someone thank you for something you’ve completely forgotten? You know the kind of experience I mean. A friend of yours, or even more likely, an acquaintance, tells you about a chance remark of yours that made a real difference to her. Perhaps it was when her Dad was in the hospital,…
The Unbearable Lightness of Love Morning light pours from the whitewashed sky like golden honey, perfuming the air; by noon butterflies electrify the woods; the scent of fresh-cut hay drifts everywhere. Ungrateful sons push old men toward death as if wealth and youth were complete success like the rings around raccoon’s tails elevating them to…
In the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, there is a painting hanging in a distant, back hallway. The painting commemorates the first use of ether as anesthesia during an operation, which occurred at Mass General near the turn of the century. As I recall it, there is a brief narrative on the wall near the…
Two weeks ago, a six year old girl who lives a few doors away was outside, swinging in her backyard. She was playing a popular children’s game of swinging until she gained sufficient momentum, and then jumped off the swing as it swing forward, sending her up and out, higher and farther than the swing…
“Mother Mary meek and mild…” In artistic depictions of the Visitation, all the great medieval and renaissance paintings, there seems to be a uniformity in the blandness of Mary’s facial expression that seems curiously at odds with Luke’s description, “Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country,…” In the birth narratives the focus…
The doctrine of the Trinity, simply stated: There is One God and this One God is three “persons,” Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity are equally God, “co-equal and co-eternal,” we say. One is not more divine than another. One is not subordinated to any other. But God is not…
In Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, much is made of thank-you notes, especially thank-you notes for weddings presents. One of her sample letters reads as follows: Dear Aunt Patience: Rhino and I are thrilled with the magnificent silver sugar shaker you sent us. It adds not only beauty and dignity to our table, but…
According to the scriptures, Jesus parted from his disciples and was carried up into heaven. He disappeared into a cloud. So much art and folk legend is attached to this almost magical understanding of how Jesus left his friends for the last time. The writer could have said, Jesus went around the corner and was…
…as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight… ACTS 1:9 It’s always a little surprising, the kinds of questions people ask. You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered about and you’re the one who can tell me the answer: Does it say in the Bible that…
Our gospel reading is taken from the low point in Jesus’ ministry. Soon, he will go to Gethsemane and on to the Cross. John does not portray Jesus’ agony. Instead, John portrays the truth about Jesus. And the truth is that in his last hours Jesus came to see his disciples in a new way….
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