Jesus’s relationship with the words king and kingdom caused nothing but trouble during his whole life. Up on the cross we are told there was a sign, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. You’ve all seen the letters INRI at the top of the cross in images of the crucifixion — that’s what the letters stand for. In a way, he was crucified over a misunderstanding of what kind of king Jesus said he was. On the one hand, once when people came looking for Jesus and they wanted to make him a king, Jesus ran away, because whatever kind of king they were thinking of, that wasn’t it.…
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This gospel is sometimes called the parable of the unjust steward, or if you want an updated title, sometimes it’s the story of the dishonest manager. But whatever you call it, it certainly doesn’t sound like a story where at the end, the moral is going to be, let’s find a way to be a little bit like that dishonest manager. But that is what we get. So if you have questions after having heard about this man and about what this story might mean, you’re not the only one in the past two thousand years who has felt that way. Let’s get to the heart of the story by…
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It’s frustrating sometimes, but it’s a fact that even the most brilliant theologians don’t know very much about what our life with God in the future is going to be like. All we have are hints and images, and we get some of the most powerful ones in today’s gospel. First, today we hear again the only image that Jesus uses more than once to describe eternal life, we’re told it’s a banquet, a wedding feast even, one where God is virtually at the table with us, a celebration of our presence together that doesn’t end. It’s the world reunited and transformed. I think that’s something that is appealing to…
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In the gospels, Jesus is seen praying frequently, but it’s interesting, the disciples, not so much. Maybe after some time together they finally noticed this, and in today’s gospel, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray. And in response, although he does give them a prayer to memorize, and we have all dutifully done that for centuries, in response what he really tells them are a couple of stories, and the stories aren’t really about exactly how to pray. What Jesus wants them to understand is not so much about how, but about who, something about who the God they are praying to actually is. Because if we get…
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In this last week before Pentecost Sunday, we’re hearing the last of a series of readings from John’s gospel, all taken from a monologue by Jesus that goes on for several chapters, the words that he spoke to the disciples on the night he was betrayed. Our gospels during the Easter Season every year are all from this long farewell message. Some of Jesus’s words are directed to the disciples themselves, emotional and beautiful words, although sometimes hard for us to understand. But today we reach a kind of climax, since now Jesus is addressing not the disciples but his father, God the father, and now what he says is…
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When you think about it, it’s surprising how little there is in the gospel about the whole question about whether people believe in God, or don’t believe. It’s surprising since so many of the debates we hear around us when it comes to religion are about that question, whether we believe there is a God, whether it’s rational, or why other people don’t believe, asking ourselves, is that why young people aren’t part of religion, because they don’t believe. But in the gospel, really, there’s a different focus to what Jesus says that following him is all about. It turns out God is expecting something from us very different from…
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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…
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Today is a difficult gospel, because it’s one where we encounter a Jesus who wants our attention for something he knows will be hard for us to hear. But before we take this pungent little sermon by Jesus head on, let’s take a minute just to reflect on the Jesus who is giving this sermon, and why he feels so strongly about this message he is trying to give us that really turns the world as we know it upside down. Here’s one thing that should always strike us about Jesus, in all the stories we hear about him, and it’s this: Jesus understood how people hurt and what they…
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We have images in our mind of Jesus preaching, and in those images, the preaching is usually going over very well. There are paintings of the sermon on the mount where Jesus is addressing an enormous crowd, somehow without benefit of any amplification, and everyone in that crowd of thousands is rapt in attention, hanging on his every word. But Jesus, of course, unlike most of the rest of us who stand up here and preach, he wasn’t always concerned about his preaching being well received and generally liked. When he needed to, he could provoke strong reactions. Of course, people could be spellbound and inspired by his teaching, but…
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I have this friend, and I’m not going to mention any names of course, but I have a friend who has very, very little talent when it comes to having a party. I guess his heart is in the right place and all, but all the things that really make a party work, even a little dinner, just aren’t quite right. If you arrive a little hungry, and you’re hoping there are some appetizers out that you can take the edge off with, you will probably be disappointed. There’s wine available, which is good, but there are the tiniest wine glasses you can imagine, beautiful, but fragile and tiny, so…