The Scriptures for today call us to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us and to develop a perspective that will help us distinguish between false messiahs and the message of Jesus. Each of us is invited to inwardly digest this biblical story and to identify similar situations or stories in…

She in her poverty, who needs so much,has given away everything,her whole living. Whenever I read this Gospel, I remember the following story about the Rev. Gordon Cosby, founder and pastor of the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C. The incident occurred when Cosby was a young man, minister of a small Baptist congregation…

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?… bring no more vain offerings. God is lonely for us. God, our Creator, our very help in time of need, longs for us, for our love, for our prayers for help, for prayers of praise and thanksgiving. You shall love the Lord your God with all…

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Mark10:51 (NRSV) Amidst the headlong welter of events in Mark’s Gospel, the healing of Bartimaeus at the end of Jesus’ amazing tour southward through Galilee gets our attention in…

Once, in a time long past but remembered in stories and brought to mind by bits of pottery dug up from mounds of earth that experts say were once towns, there lived a servant. This servant, or so he proclaimed himself, had no visible master. This peculiarity disturbed many people who came in contact with…

In the Philadelphia Museum of Art there’s a striking painting by Russian Marc Chagall. As Chagall’s often complexly allergorical or symbolic paintings go, it’s very simple. It has a large white figure of a man, several smaller white figures of houses and a church, and two words in Russian on a black background. The striking…

Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. I promise…until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. How many of us have repeated these words? They seemed so true, so beautiful, so eternal, so right, didn’t they, when we first said them? Yet for some of us, they have become…

This doesn’t seem to be a good day for anyone in any of the three scripture lessons we read today. Moses is mad at the Israelites. And what a wonderful description we’re given of Moses! Imagine him standing before God with his hands on his hips and probably with a huge headache. “Why do you…

Note: The reader may wish to omit the first three paragraphs in brackets depending on the context and the congregation. The sermon may begin at paragraph four and still retain its impact. [“Before Rep was even a month old, at the beginning of each feeding, Margaret would gently pinch his cheek and say, ‘Now make…