Thoughts Along the Journey

    Luke 10:25-37 Time After Pentecost      Lectionary 15      July 10, 2022 St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Hampton, VA               “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”   “Well, what does that look like?” a man asks Jesus.   “How do we do that?”   To answer, Jesus tells a story.             Who’s heard this story before, the parable of the Good Samaritan?   Well, of course you have!   It’s one of the most familiar stories, not only in the Bible, but in all of human history.   It’s a story that expresses, in shocking terms, what God desires – that all life will flourish!   All of life that God has created – all species of insects, all species of plants and the soil that nourishes them, all species of animals (including the human species) – God desires that all of life will flourish.   And, according to the story Jesus tells, when we take care of each

    Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 Time After Pentecost      Lectionary 14      July 3, 2022 St. Paul Lutheran Church    Hampton, Virginia   We’re reading through the gospel of Luke on Sunday mornings this year.     When we read just a piece of the story each Sunday, it’s hard to appreciate the gospel as a literary work that the editor-author created.   He collected and fashioned the many stories being told about what Jesus said and did, into a single dramatic story, designed to persuade readers that Jesus is the Christ!   (May I suggest a faith practice for you?   Read the entire gospel of Luke, noticing how it moves and builds towards its conclusion!   I guarantee you will appreciate the Sunday morning readings to a greater degree!) Last week we reached a significant turning point in the story, as the author of   the gospel of Luke tells it.   It began the section in Luke that we’re reading now.   Here’s the turning point, in these words: When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be

     Galatians 5:1, 13-25     Lectionary 13       Third Sunday after Pentecost       June 26, 2022      St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Yorktown, Virginia               You don’t hear many “Thou shalt nots” in a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.   That’s because we are so Biblical!     (All churches say they’re “Biblical!”   What that means, for us in the ELCA, is that we interpret all that’s in the Bible according to Jesus.   We give weight to those passages in the Bible that witness to Jesus and Jesus’ model and Jesus’ teachings, and we don’t pay much attention to passages in the Bible that contradict Jesus’ inclusive love, his compassion.   We give great weight to this morning’s reading from Galatians.)             Biblical religion is not a religion of rules.   It is a religion of love!   That’s what the Apostle Paul is writing about to the churches in Galatia.             Do you remember how the reading begins?   For freedom Christ has set us free

  Trinity Sunday         June 12, 2022 St. Martin’s Episcopal Church Williamsburg, Virginia               The older I get, the more interested I am in God as mystery.   God is beyond human understanding!   There is grace in that: there is no minimum required understanding to be considered in good standing..   And this moves us to a healthy humility: because no one can claim to have God all figured out.   (Lord knows the world would be a more peaceful place if more Christians acted less out of arrogance and more out of humility.) But how can we know anything about God, if God is beyond human understanding?   That is the purpose for this day on the liturgical calendar.   Today is the Sunday of the Holy Trinity.   It’s the only Sunday that is devoted to a doctrine, a teaching of the church.   (I hope to make that more interesting than it sounds!)   Let’s use the Nicene Creed, following its words into the mystery of God, who the Creed names to be Father and Son and Holy Spirit.