I think sometimes that the Easter Season has a marketing and promotion problem, and let me explain a little about why. Think back to the season of Lent a few weeks ago; we might all have a slightly different way of expressing it, but after 2,000 years we all have successfully learned what Lent is, that Lent is a time for regrouping, for taking stock, for prayer and fasting and deciding what changes and forms of reconversion might be good for us. That has been very successful. And then the Easter comes, and in these seven weeks we’re supposed to now feel and do — what exactly? I don’t think…
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In that first reading we heard from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard that the early church community in Jerusalem felt so close to one another that they did something amazing, they shared all their property as if it were all common property, the idea being that if anyone needed anything, they would be taken care of. The question is, where did they get this idea? It’s not as if Jesus told them that private property had been abolished, or really said anything at all about how his followers were supposed to organize themselves, or even if they were going to be very organized at all. But the resurrection…
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I’m sure you all remember the past when people used to attend sporting events in person. And in the end zones at football games you’d often see someone holding up a sign that said John 3:16. And of course that’s scriptural shorthand for one of the sentences in today’s gospel, the one that tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only son to bring us eternal life. I imagine that the people in the end zones with those signs think that if you were going to see only one sentence from the gospel, only remember one thing, that this is the one. Are they right?…
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As I was preparing to stand up here and preach on the Second Sunday of Lent I was struck by the fact that all the things the church usually says about what to do during Lent seem all wrong this year. I mean, I feel like Lent has already been going on for a year — didn’t Lent start last March and just never stop? We didn’t have Easter last year, we didn’t really have summer, I don’t think there was Christmas really. The mood for all of us has been subdued at best, and for many people it has been worse than that, a time of real loss and…
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If you ever read any of the gospels all the way through, every time you do it, something new will strike you that you have never noticed before. And I’ll bet that one thing you would notice sooner rather than later is how much of Jesus’s life was spent healing people. We tend to imagine a great deal of his life was spent talking, because so much care was taken to record some of the things he repeatedly said. But really, when he went from place to place, he must have spent more time healing people than preaching, and it’s that, more than his words, that drew enormous crowds to…
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We just heard two stories today, in that first reading and in the gospel, about God speaking to people very directly. So I think the question for today is, does God speak to people, and does he ever speak to us? The first problem we face trying to answer that question is this. We all have seen people who seem very sure God speaks to them all the time, and is it possible they’re delusional or confused? Unfortunately the answer is yes, it is quite possible. We’re human and we can all deceive ourselves or be deceived by others. Plenty of people manage to convince themselves they’re on God’s side…
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So if Advent is our season of waiting and expectation, what are we really waiting for in these last few days before Christmas? I think in today’s gospel we find out: We are waiting for someone to speak to us, with words about what is next — and not just generally, but next for us. We sometimes think those words are impossible. The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said Advent waiting is like miners who are trapped in a coal mine, waiting for any noise off in the distance as a sign that someone, anyone, is coming to rescue them. Maybe especially we feel that way this year, we have all…
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Jesus told the disciples a lot of things that they had trouble understanding, even some things they probably had a problem believing. One of those things was this, he said that after he was dead and gone from them, leaving them behind, that they would actually be better off and more fortunate then, and the reason he gave was that then, they would have the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, he said, would give them everything they needed and more, not just to live, but to live in joy, to live as his followers, to be able to do the great things he told them needed to be done. So why…
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I’ve been leading this Good Friday service here for more than 20 years, but I’ve never seen the sight I’m looking at now, which is 600 empty places. It seems all wrong, but in a way, maybe it’s not. This liturgy is partly about a deep feeling of emptiness that comes upon all of us. At the end of this gospel we just heard, everyone has scattered, the entire cast of characters of the gospels has disappeared, there’s a tomb with a stone in front of it, this great city where something amazing was supposed to happen seems suddenly deserted, and night has come. On Good Friday this is where…
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When we hear this story, it’s hard not to think we are hearing the world saying no as loudly as it could to everything Jesus lived for. It was a no to all his teaching in the countryside, gathering the poor to be encouraged and healed, going from place to place doing no apparent harm, there was something about it that led to today, it all had to be stopped, both religious and civil leaders saw it as easier to just put him to death. And he was subjected to the worst kind of death they could think of, not just execution but degradation, a way of saying that he…