Church conflict is nothing new. Sometimes people think there should be no conflict in church, as though by virtue of being Christians we can and should cover over all disagreements with niceness. Jesus in his teaching in our gospel lesson today seems to proceed on the baseline assumption that conflict in Christian community is normal…

Today’s gospel lesson is part of Jesus’ teaching about our life together in community, how it is that we are to live and love within the Christian community, especially when things go wrong. And because we are talking about human beings living in community, we can be fairly sure that things will go wrong. Our…

We thought last week’s gospel was the tough one, didn’t we? Last Sunday’s passage was the turning point in Matthew’s gospel – the point where Jesus begins to announce his fate. He begins telling his followers that his end is death and theirs, most likely, would be death, too. Remember, Peter said, “God forbid,” and…

Long ago the great Anglican priest and poet John Donne reminded us that, “no man is an island, entire unto himself.” For centuries we have considered a person living totally alone to be a hermit. More and more we are discovering that even in densely populated cities loneliness is a chronic, debilitating, and common condition….

Some of you might have seen the film Signs this summer. Behind the scary, horror movie surface of its narrative is the very human story of a priest whose wife has recently been killed in a car accident. As a result, the priest finds he is losing his faith in God. He has taken off…

The Gospel reading today deals with ways to settle disagreements and conflicts. How do you feel about disagreements? Do you avoid them? Do you hate them? Do you enjoy them? Do you always win them or lose them? Sometimes people have the impression that since we claim to be Christians, we will live in eternal…

Several years ago, thirty members of the Council of Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission held their annual meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Their subject matter was culture and social justice, and so they arranged for a workshop of liberation theology and its local expression in Cuernavaca. On a hot April afternoon they were led across…