[RCL]: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30 Have any of you heard of the game Marco Polo?  Not the app – that is something different. This game can be played in a swimming pool or on land. The person who is “It” is blindfolded and placed in the center of a group of…

Before I went to seminary, I spent a year working with my mom on her organic farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. We cared for goats, cows, sheep, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and pigs – as well as tending to vegetable crops and fruit trees. We didn’t have very much of any single thing…

Today many churches will celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, especially those parishes and congregations that have “Good Shepherd” in their titles. “The Good Shepherd” is a title that Jesus used for himself in a famous section of the Gospel of John in which he declares, “I am the Good Shepherd.” The passage is so meaningful for…

In today’s readings we are presented several times with the familiar shepherd motif. The text from Revelation declares that the “lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd” and the gospel reading is about belonging to God, as sheep belong to a shepherd. Perhaps nowhere is this metaphor more poignantly presented than…

It’s an old, familiar image, but a powerful one, that for nearly a century has illustrated what was once a new, amazing reality. The Radio Corporation of America, or “RCA,” created a lasting logo: the figure of a dog sitting before a Victrola record player, staring in wonder at the speaker. The caption told it…

The Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the most well-known chapters in the Bible. Countless people have memorized it, usually in the King James Version: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;He leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul;He leadeth me in the paths…

In a little town in a little church in southwest Missouri, the children and their Sunday school teacher were talking about Jesus. “Did Jesus speak English or Spanish?” the children wanted to know. For the most part, their parents speak Spanish as their “first” language. Their teachers, for the most part, speak English. The kids…

This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, the middle Sunday of the season. And, on this middle Sunday, we find the Gospel reading asking what sounds like a rather curious question for this time in the church year. Consider where we are in the year as we observe it in our church rituals and emphases….

“I know them, and they follow me. I gave them eternal life.” I heard this story on National Public Radio recently. Jeff Smith, “Frugal Gourmet,” was traveling through Washington state and was in a remote area when he came across a flock of sheep crossing the road. He stopped his car to wait and soon…