Scripture
Detour to mission: An unplanned ministry
When the church I serve undertook a strategic planning process, there was more golden calf than fiery pillar. But while we planned, God summoned.
And Jesus sang
After Jesus shared his last supper with his friends, they sang a hymn together. There is every reason to believe it was the Hallel, Psalms 113 through 118. How have I missed this before?
Sunday, September 26, 2010: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
Security and risk are nothing new. Today's biblical texts deal not with stocks and bonds exactly, but with living in the real circumstances of a difficult and uncertain world while also accepting the possibility of good, of help and support, comfort and security.
Sunday, September 19, 2010: Luke 16:1-13; 1 Timothy 2:1-7
The steward's only failing may be that he's replaceable, and the lesson he learns is that money talks.
Out of darkness: Images that reach us
My husband and I found the WorldWide Telescope a few months ago, and we’ve been staring into the heavens ever since. “Which planet would you like to see first?” he asked me once he'd loaded the program onto his computer. No question: Saturn. I’ve always been fascinated by those rings. A few clicks of the mouse and there they were, circling and circling, a sash of light, a halo, a crown. We looked at Jupiter next, with its great red spot. We looked at Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto. Each planet was unique, different from every other. But what they had in common was this: they shone out of utter darkness.
Transformed
The Transfiguration provides a window through which the Christian narrative may be viewed.
Holy irony: Matthew 26:14–27:66
At one end of Matthew, Jesus goes free. At the other, cruel, ritualized slaughter befalls him.
Measure of faith: 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
An emphasis on the decision character of faith has a long and deep history in the American psyche going back to our Puritan and evangelical ancestors. From Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney to Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and their successors, faith, as encountered in the idiom both of born-again revivalism and of religious “progressives,” has served as shorthand for “I have decided to follow Jesus.” But the biblical meaning of faith cannot be reduced to individualistic voluntarism.
Eye of the needle: 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
Next to the window in my study, where I can’t but see it every day, there’s a framed cartoon from an old edition of the National Lampoon. It’s a spoof of a Medici rose window from the cathedral in Florence, and depicts a laughing camel leaping with ease through the eye of a needle. The superscription reads: “a recurring motif in works commissioned by the wealthier patrons of Renaissance religious art,” while the Latin inscription on the window itself is “Dives Vincet,”or “Wealth Wins!”