Thoughts Along the Journey

  John 6:1-21 Pentecost 10 Lectionary 17 July 28, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia What do you hunger for? That’s the question for me this morning, bad grammar and all. It comes to me out of the first part of the story we read this morning, from the gospel of John. What do you hunger for? To be human is to hunger. Have you ever worried about where your next meal was coming from? Or, at least, have you done ministry in places where the hunger was physical? When I was in seminary in Chicago, I spent two years working in an African American Lutheran congregation on the southside, in a neighborhood where the crime rate was the highest in the city of Chicago and the unemployment rate was second highest. (Or maybe it was the other way around; I could never remember.) What poverty there was, and physical hunger. My first call was to a congregation in the affluent near-Baltimore town of Towson, Maryland. The public schools were like privat...

  Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 Pentecost 9 Lectionary 16 July 21, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia Ah! Peace and quiet! When I say that, you know just what I mean, don’t you? Where is your place for peace and quiet? My family spent this past week at the beach. For many, sitting and looking out at the ocean is the ultimate in peace and quiet. For many, others, peace and quiet means being in the woods! (For me, in particular, it’s when I emerge from my tent into the early morning, and I’m the first one up. Boiling water, making coffee, sipping, sitting and listening to the sounds of nature.) Is “peace and quiet” the same as sabbath time? It can be, if it’s a practice with intention: consciously receiving the awareness of God’s blessing of this day, the gift of this day of life. And, to continue the theme of sabbath that we’ve been emphasizing all summer, during Pastor Phillip’s sabbatical, this can happen on a typical day at home, rig...

  Mark 6:1-13 Pentecost 7 Lectionary 14 July 7, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia I have a friend who is fully grown. But, for years, when she visited home, she was a child again. She told me about returning home one year for Thanksgiving and, when she wanted to help with the dinner, her mother and older sisters gave her the job of chopping the celery. That’s it! That had been her job as a child, and it was all they were going to let her do! Have you had the experience: of returning home, an accomplished adult, and being patronized by those who remember you as a child? It looks like that’s what Jesus is experiencing, in this morning’s story in the gospel of Mark. It’s a story that immediately follows the healing stories we read last week. Here’s how it begins: [Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. In the gos...

  Mark 5:21-43 Pentecost 6 Lectionary 13 June 30, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia Whenever we experience healing, there is the kingdom of God. Whenever we receive healing – because healing comes to us, as a gift – there is the kingdom of God. What joy there is in paying attention to this! In recent weeks, in Vacation Bible School and in Sunday morning worship, we’ve been immersed in the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark. Jesus has been describing the kingdom of God with parables: of seeds growing and producing foliage and fruit, and that it is God who causes any growth to happen. What grace there is in that – that it’s not all up to us! All you and I can do is sow the seeds. How hopeful we can be – because it’s not all up to us! What joy there is in paying attention to this, during daily sabbath time – even if that’s as little as 15 minutes – a gift of time to receive, to become aware of our experiences of God’s presence, of God’s p...

  Mark 4:35-41 Pentecost 5 Lectionary 12 June 23, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia For me, it’s a time for being still. It’s a place for receiving peace, for me. Sitting out on the screened porch in the early morning, with my first mug of coffee, during my 15 minutes of sabbath time, I listen to the birds and watch the bluebird couple dart in and out of the box, tending to their newly-hatched young. I watch the sun first peek through the trees. (The yard is full of mature oak trees.) It’s such a time of receiving the peace of Christ. Where is your place of peace, for stillness? When is your time of day for stillness, for receiving peace? I wonder if Jesus and his disciples were at peace, as they pushed their fishing boat out onto the Sea of Galilee? On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] said to them, “let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boat...

  Mark 4:26-34 Pentecost 4 Lectionary 11 June 16, 2024 Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia With my first mug of coffee in the morning, I go out and sit on the screened porch. It’s a time to just sit, and to accomplish not a single thing. Instead, it’s a few minutes to calm my monkey brain that’s been going full speed since the moment I woke up. It’s a time for listening to the birds in the trees – songbirds and the woodpecker farther away in the woods. It’s a time to watch the activities of the bluebird couple who have built a nest in the bluebird box, and the cardinal couple who have built a nest in a boxwood 100 feet away; a time for watching the sun first peek through the trees. It’s a time of paying attention to the freshets of air, the breezes. It’s a time to pay attention to this moment. It’s sabbath time! During these 15 minutes, or so of sabbath time, I become aware: of what God is doing and has been doing when I was asleep, of the natur...