Here’s a question to start today: When we try to pray, how do we begin? What do you do? I would imagine that if we actually took a survey here today which, don’t worry, isn’t going to happen, it would take way too long, but if we did, I think we would get a wide variety of answers, ranging from one of the memorized or traditional prayers that some of us have known for years, to a few people who would be very honest and say, well, you know, a lot of times I don’t really know how to start, I feel awkward and like I am not really good…
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There are a few things in the gospel that Jesus was extraordinarily clear about, and one of them was that it is very, very dangerous any time we think we are in a position to judge the sins or the faith of other people. You can think immediately of Jesus telling the people who were ready to stone the woman taken in adultery that only if they were without sin themselves should they be throwing a stone. You can also remember he pointed out how eager we are to point out the speck in someone else’s eye when we can’t see the log in our own. He was pretty clear…
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When we picture someone being healed in the gospels, I think it’s inevitable that what we picture is a crowd scene. Because in many of these healing stories, that’s exactly what it is. There are spectators, sometimes a large crowd, and they see a miracle, but really they see it from a distance, their perspective is a little bit like you out there, watching what’s going on up here. And when we hear these stories, that’s a little the way we can feel about them, too, they’re distant, something happening to someone else, with us more as an audience than as an active participant. But today, the scene and the…