Somebody once made the remark, “Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families.” One might ask, How shall we see our way through such a curmudgeonly statement into something edifying? However irritating the attitude, there is a grain of truth in this grouchy remark. Today’s gospel reading is tough, but a tough…

It seems that Christians are obsessed with counting sheep. How often do you hear Christians of all stripes asking each other about the size of each other’s congregations? Often we hear folks asking, “How many do you have on a Sunday morning?” We marvel at so-called mega-churches. We feel good when we see a large…

Born in 1496, John Colet was an English priest on the cusp of the English Reformation, the son of the Lord Mayor of London. He took an M.A. degree at Oxford before traveling to Italy to study canon and civil law, patristics, and Greek. He belonged to a group at Oxford known as the Platonic…

There’s a great saying in the South that goes like this: “That preacher’s just gone from preachin’ to meddlin’.” And that’s exactly what Jesus has done in today’s Gospel. He’s gone from preachin’ to meddlin’. “If you don’t hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, you cannot…

As in all things, let us begin with prayer to Almighty God.The Lord be with you.Let us pray, Lord God, you created all things, you arranged all things and in you we move, and breathe and have our being. Tutor our hearts so we can follow you. Empty our minds of the busyness of this…