[RCL] Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8 Despite the run-of-the-mill way that John narrates this dinner party with Jesus, there is a kind of shocking absurdity to it all. Taken together with the preceding chapter, the scene unfolds like this: Word reaches Jesus that his beloved friend Lazarus is gravely ill. He sets…

On this fifth Sunday in Lent, our thoughts turn to suffering. As they should since we are fast approaching Holy Week and the Walk of Sorrows. This is why the highly poetic words of the psalmist, so filled with joyful images, are jarring on this particular day. Then was our mouth filled with laughter,  …

Realistic. Practical. Sensible. Those are words we all like to use to describe ourselves and our churches. We are Christians who believe in an amazing story of death and resurrection, but in the end we have to come back down to earth and live in the real world. Someone has to make sure the budget…

The United States Office of Government Ethics maintains pages and pages of rules related to gift-giving among federal employees. “An employee may never give a gift to the employee’s official superior,” is one such rule. On annual holidays and birthdays, however, an employee is allowed to give his or her superior a gift, so long…

As we turn our faces now toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we are given this last Sunday in Lent to ponder God’s gift of generosity and what that generosity means in our lives with Him and one another. We may start by looking at the family of Mary and Martha of Bethany, with their…

Quite a few of us grew up in evangelical churches and were raised on a diet of fiery preaching and gospel hymns. One of the most popular hymns of that genre is “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Jesus was rich in friends and found great joy in them. Indeed, his choice of friends…

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” These are very autobiographical lines from Paul, who once thought…

It is the night before Palm Sunday. Jesus has already traveled much of the way to Jerusalem. He has faced many trials along the way. He has spent a lot of time, energy, and God’s love feeding people, healing people, confronting people, being confronted and challenged, and all the time walking, walking, walking along the…