In today’s Gospel lesson, Mark tells us how Jesus began teaching in parables. As the summer goes on, we’ll be reading Mark’s gospel straight through, and you will get to hear plenty more of these stories – Mark reports that although Jesus gave explanations and interpretations to his disciples, to the general public he spoke only in parables. So just what is…
It is sorely tempting to ignore the famously difficult gospel lesson for today and focus entirely on the first reading from the book of Samuel, with its rather straightforward argument between God and the Israelites. I’m not going to give in to that temptation, but before we move on to Mark’s gospel, I do want to call your attention to the first…
Today is Trinity Sunday, the only commemoration in our church calendar that remembers a doctrine rather than a person or event. And it’s a difficult doctrine – if you want to know how difficult, how much it vexed the earliest Christian theologians, just turn to page 864 in the Book of Common Prayer, in the section of the book called Historical Documents…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! That must have been some sermon the disciples preached. I’m sure every preacher since then has wished she or he had a copy of it. I mean, sure, the mighty wind and all those tongues of flames must have helped get the message across. And it can’t have hurt that this rag-tag band of uneducated fishermen and laborers…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! And, we remember today, is rising still. The Feast of the Ascension is, I think, a strange holiday, just as the biblical stories we tell on this day are strange stories. Jesus, who has been walking the earth for forty days after his resurrection, gives some last-minute instructions to his friends and then disappears in a nimbus of…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Every year on the fourth Sunday of Easter, we read a portion of the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel. The entire chapter is the account of Jesus describing himself as ”The Good Shepherd,” and contrasting his own care and sacrifice on behalf of his flock to that of the wolf, who is always seeking to harm the…
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! This Sunday’s gospel reading from Luke follows immediately after the famous account of Jesus’ appearance to two of his friends on the road to Emmaus after his death and resurrection. And the story we just heard seems very similar to the first part of the story from John’s gospel that we heard last Sunday about Doubting Thomas. So…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Our gospel lesson today picks up where we left off last week. It’s still that first Easter day, but it is evening now, and Jesus is popping up all over the place to prove to his followers that he is risen, and, as we heard in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, pretty soon the…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Mark was the first person that we know of to write down the story of Jesus’ life. In fact, it is from the beginning of Mark’s account of Jesus’ life that we get the name for these kinds of writings: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ” is how the book of Mark begins, and “Good…