The middle part of Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet is one of my favorites of all the stories Jesus tells. It really draws you in, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t like a party, after all. And this party is the one that all the really cool people got invited to. It’s like the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Except that…
The twenty-first chapter of Matthew’s gospel, which we have been reading from for two Sundays, depicts Jesus at his most confrontational. He’s just made that triumphal entry into Jerusalem that we remember on Palm Sunday, and he knows the leaders of his faith community are gunning for him, and yet he seems to be baiting…
Jesus’ story of the two sons in today’s Gospel lesson has special resonance for me, because I have two teenaged boys. Not that it’s common in my household for one of the boys to say he will not do something and then go ahead and do it anyway. But on almost a daily basis I…
This parable Jesus tells about the workers and their wages is kind of annoying, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not just the workers who were at it all day who feel there’s something not right here – the whole thing just doesn’t seem fair. For those of us raised in what we sometimes call the…
As I was preparing the sermon for this week, I was drawn to the reading from the letter of Paul to the church in Rome, first because of his snarky comments about vegetarians. I’m not as familiar with the epistles as I am with the gospels, and while it was clear that Paul was speaking…
This passage from Matthew’s gospel is troubling in many ways. Beyond the content itself, we have to acknowledge that it just doesn’t sound like Jesus – certainly not the Jesus of the rest of Matthew’s gospel. Amid all of the parables about the reign of God and the prophecies of his own death and his bantering with Peter and with outsiders, this…
For those of us whose faith isn’t always rock steady, whose spiritual journey is full of ups and downs, by which I guess I mean all of us, Peter is our example and our hope. Just last Sunday, we heard Jesus tell Peter he had received a revelation from God, was the rock on which…
On Sunday the August 24th we were privileged to have the Rev. Bruce Torrey celebrate with us at both services and talk about the work of Food for the Poor, which provides food, housing and other assistance to the neediest people in the Caribbean and Latin America.
In the reading from Genesis, the soap opera of the descendants of Abraham continues. Joseph, condemned to slavery in Egypt by his envious brothers, becomes Pharaoh’s chief of staff. When famine strikes the land, his brothers are forced to ask for help from Pharaoh, making an awful choice between slavery and starvation. And are they…
We’ve been reading the saga of Abraham and his descendants all summer long, but I’ve only addressed it from the pulpit once, when we heard the story of the binding of Isaac. With Joseph’s story we’re now at the fourth generation of this most famous of dysfunctional families. Because some of you haven’t been here…