Ethics are something most people don’t know much about today. The subject is reserved for religious academics or for people studying, for instance, philosophy or medicine. But there is a Christian ethic that Jesus spells out for us in the Gospel, and it is at least as old as Genesis, where we heard about Joseph’s…

Mark is a farmer in the Midwest. He moved there from Michigan with his family several years ago, bought some acreage, and began farming. Within six months a large hog confinement operation began on land bordering his farm. The dream of a family farm and a quiet rural life soon became a nightmare of unrelenting…

Gordon Cosby at the Church of the Savior in Washington, DC, tells the story that when he was a teenager, he and his brother promised not to come home unless they had brought at least one person to Jesus Christ that day. One day Gordon had not been successful, so he climbed on board a…

In the days before kindergarten gave pupils their first taste of learning, a teacher gave a first grader a gift he would use every day of his life. She taught him to read. The teacher, whose name was Nanny Arbuckle, “loved” her pupils into learning and taught them the joy of school. In a way,…

Our scripture readings are arranged in a three-year Lectionary cycle. The readings themselves were chosen by some committee years ago. Sometimes, the Lectionary is accused of being too rigid. It is not flexible enough, so goes the argument, to be relevant to our daily lives. Yet, what could be more appropriate than a lesson referring…

It’s January now. Here in New England we’ve hunkered down for whatever contingencies winter might visit upon us. The last needles have fallen off the Christmas trees, costumes from the Nativity pageant are stored away for next year, miniature outdoor lights have been unplugged, and the whole Yuletide season is receding into memory. Outdoors, snowplows…

The story of the wedding at Cana of Galilee has been read in Epiphany for a very long time. That’s because the theme of Epiphany is the manifestation, the showing off to the world, of Jesus-of who he is, of what he is about. The business of changing water into wine was the first of…

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in…