Texts: Revelation 21:1-4; Luke 2:1-20

As many folks do, I collect nativity sets. I haven’t been collecting long, so I don’t have so many, but I have the set that was in my father’s family when he was a child; and a beautiful olive wood set from Israel that I got years ago when I was in seminary; also a lovely small ceramic set that Tyler gave me in Mexico a few years ago; and a wonderful hand-carved set by a student we met at the Bagamoyo Sculpture School in Tanzania. As I was looking at the nativity sets recently, it occurred to me that they are a wonderful model of the some of the many ways people come to God…or more appropriately, respond to God coming to us. And since most of the characters in the nativity are found in this description of that first Christmas from Luke 2, this story could be seen as a microcosm of possible responses to God in the Christian story. Continue...

Texts: Colossians 3:12-17, Luke 2:41-52

I’ve recently started painting – and have painted a few little pictures now. No one is going to be fooled into thinking I have much artistic ability, but I am really enjoying the time I’m spending at painting; I love mixing colors; and I’ve even signed up for a short class. I was telling Susan Barrett that I was thinking about putting together a couple of pieces of fruit, with perhaps a bud vase and a single blossom and painting them as they sit on the kitchen table, surrounded by three days worth of mail, the morning paper, and the clutter that seems to collect so easily. And Susan had the best idea. She said, “Yeah, you could call it Real Life.” Too funny…and too true. The way we really live isn’t always the way we’d like to picture our lives. Continue...

Text: Luke 1:39-55

CNN had an interesting story on yesterday, and after hearing it, you may decide you’re attending the wrong church.
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Texts: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:26-38

I think every family has rules – indeed, most places have rules. In my family growing up, I only remember four rules: don’t lie, don’t call someone else a liar, don’t say “shut up”, and if one parent says no to something – don’t go to the other parent. That doesn’t mean those are the only things for which I could get into trouble, but those are the only things I remember being told, strictly, were rules. Continue...

Texts: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Luke 1:5-25

So Zechariah is a priest, and he is on incense duty at the temple in Jerusalem. He is in the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum, a priests-only place, and he is supposed to say a blessing when he emerges. Being on incense duty at the Jerusalem temple was a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And apparently the last thing Zechariah expected during such an occasion was a religious experience. Who would expect to run into a messenger of God in church, after all?? Continue...

Texts: Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6

Black Friday was two days ago – the iconic and ironic kickoff to the holiday shopping season. We are beginning Advent today, the church's season of preparing to celebrate Christmas. I'm not sure that there is a better example of the contrast between faith and culture than this time of year. And most of us will have one foot firmly in each camp, and we may wonder why, exactly, Christmas doesn't “work” for us as it used to – back before we were doing all the work of Christmas, that is. And believe it or not, I think that is a key piece of the puzzle. Continue...

Texts: Revelation 1:4a-8; Mark 10:35-45

Seating arrangements can matter a lot. In 1968, the Paris peace talks around the Vietnam conflict spent roughly 8 months determining what the shape of the table would be, around which the negotiators would sit: a rectangle? Who sits where? A round table? Better perhaps. And on and on went the negotiations. Seating arrangements for weddings can be this dicey, too. Continue...

Texts: Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Mark 10:17-31

This is one of those stories from the ministry of Jesus that we spend a lot of time trying to explain away – surely he didn't mean this, we say. Wasn't there a gate into Jerusalem called the Needle's Eye? A smaller doorway that would be harder for a camel to go through? Isn't that what Jesus was talking about??

And I have bad news and good news. Continue...

Texts: Micah 6:1-8; Luke 8:22-26

Today is All Saints' Day, a church holiday that is not nearly so famous as it's “Eve” - All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween. While traditionally, All Saints' Day has been a day to remember those who have died, it is important not to limit the idea of sainthood to the dead. While there is a legalistic meaning to sainthood in the Catholic church, and within that definition, being dead is a prerequisite for sainthood, outside the Catholic church sainthood is not limited to the dead. Indeed, most of the Apostle Paul's letter's in the New Testament were addressed to the saints, like: “To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints...” or “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours....” or “to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae....” There are other places in the Bible that refer to saints, but in general, the intent is the same: to describe people who are part of the gathered people of God, that is, people in the Church.
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Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; John 8:31-36

“Decently and in order” -- those of you who have been Presbyterians for very long will recognize that phrase. It’s a phrase we usually use when we are laughing at ourselves. It’s a phrase that’s become more than a stereotype, it’s become a cliché, but it’s an affectionate cliché that we use for ourselves. Where does it come from -- this phrase, “Decently and in order” -- what does it mean? Interestingly enough it comes from one of our creeds, the Scots Confession, which was written in 1560 as part of the English Reformation -- that’s part of our story. Today is Reformation Sunday, the last Sunday in October, when we remember the beginnings in 1517 of the Reformed Tradition, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part. That's part of our story.
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Texts: Deuteronomy 30:11-30; Mark 8:27-38

The three rules of real estate are said to be “location, location, location” -- and the three rules of understanding the Bible could equally well be the same, although we'd likely say it as “context, context, context”. In trying to understand the Bible, those actually could be three different rules: we want to understand the literary context of a passage – what is happening around a certain passage? What, in particular, is going on in the passages immediately before and after a given passage? Second, what is the historical context? What was going on in the lives of the people in the story, and the people who first heard this story? And third, what is our own context? Unfortunately, we don't always have the time to address these thoroughly within a Sunday morning sermon, especially if we're working with two texts. So let's try to hit the highlights.
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Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25; Mark 6:45-51

Today is our final week in this year's Season of Creation – one of the things I enjoy about the Season of Creation is that we are reminded that the ordinary things of the world that surround us – trees, rivers, grasses, ocean, mountains, sky – are more complex than we are usually aware. It's a season to remember how amazing the world is. It's a season that challenges us to take more seriously that God's spirit flows through all of life. It's a season in which I am often filled with wonder – because I am paying attention. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 124; Mark 7:24-30

Most of the Gospel stories are about Jesus and other people of his background – Jews from Galilee or Jerusalem. But there are some episodes when Jesus is interacting with others – a Roman centurion, or in today's story, a Syro-Phoenician woman. Now the Syro-Phoenicians were one of the more recent conquerors of the Jewish people, but their conquest, about 150 years earlier, had been one of the more remarkably brutal in Jewish history. There was a well-known story of the mother and her seven sons who had been tortured to death. Many Jewish children had been killed by the Syro-Phoenicians. Syria and Phoenicia were then where Lebanon is now – north of Galilee, on the coast of the Mediterranean. Continue...

Texts: Isaiah 35:1-7; Romans 8:28-39

Think of a desert, and most of us think of some variety or another of harsh, mostly barren, hot, dry, empty place – it is true that this landform got its name from the fact that it is largely deserted by humans. The conditions of the desert are hard for humans to live with. A desert is defined as someplace with less than 10 inches of annual rainfall. Deserts may be flat or mountainous – northern Arizona has desert regions over a mile high. While most deserts are hot, often over 100 degrees, at night the temperatures can plummet. And there are also cold deserts – such as Antarctica. Deserts account for about 1/3 of the earth's land surface. The photo on your bulletin is from the desert in Israel at Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found – the greatest single collection of original Biblical texts. What's most significant, perhaps, about deserts is that they are an extreme land form – extremely dry, often extremely hot, sometimes extremely cold, usually extremely unpopulated, although there are some peoples who traditionally make their home in the desert, peoples such as the Bedouin tribes in the Middle East, or the Navaho and Anasazi in the United States. Continue...

Texts: 2 Corinthians 4:7-12; Genesis 1:1-5

Chaos...for many people the word itself creates images of disorder, anarchy, catastrophe. I don't get it. Indeed, I was very surprised once in a clergy seminar to realize that many (if not most) clergy shared this negative view of chaos – I've always thought of chaos as generative, as being a state of profound possibilities. So when one of our members suggested “chaos” as a theme for one of the Season of Creation Sundays, I was quite delighted, and now that I've reflected and read more about chaos, I find myself beginning to mine a rich vein of possibility and promise. Continue...

Texts: Mark 13:24-27; Psalm 19

I told this story in a sermon not too long ago, but it bears retelling here, as it is completely a sky experience. In 2003, I had gone to visit Jason at college in Minnesota, and the two younger boys came with me. We got snowed in for a day, and so left a morning later than we had planned, a cold and icy morning in December. We were still living on the Indiana, side of Chicago, so we had an 8-hour drive ahead of us. As we started out on the road, I was talking with the boys about how much I enjoy auto travel because of the wonderful things you can see if you're paying attention – hawks, elk, the crossing of the Mississippi...and I could almost hear their eyes rolling. They were not so impressed with my waxing eloquent about the joys of long trips in the car. Continue...

Texts: Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 2:1-20

Today we are celebrating the Feast of the Incarnation, generally known as Christmas, and usually celebrated in late December. [Don't worry – we'll celebrate it again in December...!] Why are we celebrating it today? There are a few reasons: first, there is a consensus among Biblical scholars that the birth of Jesus, if it happened as described in Luke's Gospel, could not have happened after September. Sheep are only tended outdoors when the weather permits it, and by October 1, it is getting pretty chilly. By October 15 at the VERY latest, shepherds would not be in the fields, and more likely they would be gone to shelter by the end of September. We've tied Christmas to snow and cold, but those are actually clearly not a part of Christmas. So today is a more reasonable day to celebrate Christmas than anytime in December. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 84; 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10–11, 22–30, 41–43

Eleven years ago, still in my first year of ministry, I was an associate pastor in my first church and the head of staff retired. Under his leadership, the church had become a favorite wedding location, so suddenly I had 10 weddings scheduled in 7 weeks. Kind of a baptism by fire. And ever since then, oddly enough, I have loved weddings. One of my favorite weddings that summer was the 2nd wedding of a 2-wedding day – and they had 6 little children, ages 3-5 or so, participating in the wedding. At the rehearsal, we sat the little ones down to talk with them about what to do and not to do during the wedding. You know, don’t pick your nose, don’t talk during the wedding, and so on. One of the little girls raised her hand eagerly. “You know what you must never ever do during a wedding?” she offered. “Yes?” I said, curious to hear whatever wisdom her life thus far had taught her. “You must never ever throw cabbages during a wedding” she pronounced, with finality. I could agree with that, wondering, however, what episode had provided this insight. But then, the groom crouched down to talk with the kids. He was a lovely guy – a streets and sanitation worker from Chicago – very plain-spoken and direct, with clear ideas of his own. “You need to be very well behaved tomorrow,” he said, “Because this is God’s house.” The children all nodded solemnly, and indeed, they were very well-behaved. Continue...

Texts: Ephesians 5:15-20; 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

Solomon was one of the roughly 20 sons of King David. And now David was dead and Solomon was king. Just so you know...it wasn't that simple. There were some succession issues, and we won't go through them today – the way they ended was that Solomon was king and some other people were dead. So that's where we pick up today, and we only will be spending this week and next with Solomon.... Continue...

Texts: Ephesians 4:25-5:2; 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

This week's story about King David of Israel is an episode that occurs earlier than the story about David and Bathsheba that we read over the past two weeks. It came up in the lectionary earlier in July and one of our guest preachers chose not to follow the lectionary then, so I chose to pick it up now as it is one of my favorite stories about King David. It's kind of interesting to read this now, after the David and Bathsheba story, because these two episodes show such different sides of David...or do they? Continue...

We welcomed a new family member this week. Santo is a mostly black puppy, a Portuguese Water Dog, and he is 8 weeks old today. His full name is Afortunado's Santo Pedro do Barco. Afortunado is the breeding kennel name, and the rest is Portuguese for Saint Peter of the Boat – a reminder of some of my favorite sites in Israel as well as a reminder that the puppy is a water dog. And it is also a reference to who we are called to be in the church. We're called to be saints. The breeder and several other folks familiar with Portuguese Water Dogs laughed when they heard I was calling the puppy Santo, or Saint. They said it was an entirely unrealistic name, as the breed is known for its activity and intelligence but not its compliance. One of the other breeders thought his full name should be “Afortunado's I Ain't No Saint” (never mind the double negative). Of course, some of you know that my family are Cub fans, and that Santo is also the last name of a retired Cub 3rd baseman. And after all, our other dog, a Welsh Corgi, is named Wrigley, after Wrigley Field. But Santo is primarily named Saint. And I understand the irony, but I think that the irony is also present in our faith. We are called to be saints, but we wear that label uncomfortably – most of the time we think that we ain't no saints, either. Continue...

Let’s talk about sin. A couple of weeks before I went to Israel, I looked way ahead at today’s lectionary and saw the story about David and Bathsheba, and thought: great story, tough stopping point, guess I’ll be preaching about sin. Yuck. And preaching on sin is tough, because this is a sermon during which I almost can’t make eye contact in case you think I’m trying to make a point. I’m not. So if I glance in your direction…nothing personal. Continue...

As most of you know, I was on a two-week pilgrimage to Israel and returned Thursday. This pilgrimage was funded by a grant from the Cousins Foundation in Atlanta, who sends many groups of pastors to Israel each year. Our group included 20 pastors, and 2 seminary professors from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The pastors were a diverse group – half men, half women; about half European-American, and a quarter each Asian-American and African-American; half were PCUSA, the others including United Methodist, UCC, Lutheran, AME, Baptist, and Associated Reformed Presbyterian. Our group was about half from the Louisville area, and the rest from all over: Seattle, California, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Indiana, West Virginia, New York, Iowa, and of course, Wisconsin. We spent a week in Galilee, the northern region of Israel, and a week in Jerusalem. We took day trips to the Golan Heights (on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, bordering Syria), the West Bank (where Bethlehem is) and to the Negev (the desert wilderness which includes the Dead Sea, Masada and the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found). Continue...

We have a garden in the backyard – and this year, I was busy, and we didn’t get around to planting yet. But last weekend, Carl wanted me to look at the garden anyway, because he thought something was growing there…so off we went and found about a dozen pumpkin plants doing very well. This is particularly interesting because I have wanted a pumpkin patch for a while, but never planted one. We couldn’t agree on where it should be. So here it is. Our very own pumpkin patch growing just fine, without any help at all from us…including planting. We didn’t plant this patch. So we puzzled over this for a while until I figured it out. I asked Carl if he had added compost to the garden this year. Yes, it turns out that he did. And he also composted our Halloween pumpkins last fall…but as it turns out, the seeds hadn’t fully composted yet, so we have the surprise gift of a pumpkin patch when we didn’t expect it. The Kingdom of God, growing in my backyard…. Continue...

I’m sure many of us have had the experience of watching a football game on TV, and as the cameras pan the crowd, someone – usually in the endzone – holds up a sign that says “John 3:16”. As I reflected on the lectionary, and particularly on my understanding of the Trinity, I was struck by the irony of holding up that sign at a football game – it’s like the ultimate in disengaged religion. In the middle of a spectator event (and I mean no disrespect to football here), but in the middle of a spectator event, someone holds up a sign! The irony of this is staggering, because the doctrine of the Trinity is, at its essence, about Christianity as a way of fully engaging with life and fully engaging in God. It is no spectator proposition. Continue...

Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; John 15:1-17

Two stories come to mind as I think about the church teachings on love. The first occurred at church camp, maybe 14 years ago. The camp director was talking with the children about Jesus teaching us to love one another, and at the end of her talk she said, brightly:: “So that's all we have to do! Love each other! That's not so hard, is it??” Yeah, right. Continue...

Texts: Genesis 22:1-19. Mark 3:31-35

Happy Mother’s Day!

Last summer, I was at a preaching conference where I heard Methodist Bishop William Willamon, formerly the Chaplain of Duke University. He was talking about a church sign he had seen advertising a sermon series on “the Biblical model of marriage”. “Who are they kidding?” he commented. “Every family I can think of in the Bible was dysfunctional.” While that might be a slight exaggeration, it is not far off. Let’s look at some of them... Continue...

Texts: Psalm 23, John 10:11-18, 1 John 3:16-24

Every year, the fourth Sunday of Easter season is Good Shepherd Sunday – the scriptures include 1/3 of the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, in which Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd, and usually we read the 23rd Psalm. Continue...

This Sunday we shared testimonials on our faith and how it shaped our relationship to and care for the Earth. Today we heard from members Susan Barrett, Dan Dietrich and Jeremy Higgins. Continue...

Texts: Acts 4:32-25; John 20:19-31

Question 6, hour 1: When a person bears physical marks on their hands and feet that are similar to the marks Jesus bore from the crucifixion, those marks are known by what name?

People are known by all sorts of titles: the Gospel passage this morning tells us that Thomas is known as the Twin, but most of us remember him as “Doubting Thomas”. Continue...

2009 Trivia questions and answers Continue...

Texts: Mark 16:1-8; Acts 10:34-43

Sometimes it just seems as if the world will never move forward. We humans just seem to fumble and tumble and occasionally rumble from one discouraging development to another. This week’s Christian Century magazine reported the following: “A peace conference in Johannesburg, intended to highlight the way sports can promote peace (the soccer World Cup will be held in South Africa in 2010), was canceled after the government refused a visa for the Tibetan exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and two Nobel Peace Prize winners threatened to boycott the event. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president F. W. de Klerk had said they would have to reconsider their decision to attend the conference if the Dalai Lama, a fellow Nobel Prize winner, was not granted a visa for the meeting.” Great… the peace conference was canceled because of conflicts over which peacemakers could come. I can understand why Anne Lamott would say, as she did in her most recent book, Grace, Actually, that being human is often a dispiriting experience. Continue...

Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 11:1-11

Well, now I think I’ve heard everything. There is an internet company called “Information Age Prayers” and its pitch is “Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.” Going to the website, I see that there are subscription options for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Unaffiliated and other. While all the prayers are voiced in English, for the Jewish prayers the computer speakers are turned toward Jerusalem, and for the Muslim prayers they are turned toward Mecca. You can start with a basic subscription to have the Lord’s Prayer said daily for just $3.95 a month (discounted from the usual $6 a month) or you can get a special bundle of the Lord’s Prayer, a morning prayer, 5 Get Well prayers (names may be supplied later) and a prayer for peace, all for only $19.95 monthly. Continue...

Text: Matthew 14:22-32

We enter this world from water, and we leave into mystery – in between, we seek security, stability, solid ground, a firm foundation. Our drive for stability is instinctive – you can see this in the startle reflex of babies: if you are holding a baby, and shift position so that the baby feels unstable, she will startle, flail about, until she feels secure again. I suspect that this is part of the reason that earthquakes strike most people as so terrifying – the idea that the very ground on which we rely could shift, open, heave and quake is a profoundly unsettling experience. So many of our words implying security and certainty have to do with stability, such as: our hopes are well-founded, the project is on solid ground, he is a very grounded person. Continue...

Text: Mark 6:30-44

Many of you know that my brother is a cowboy – he and my sister-in-law own a horse ranch in Arizona, not too far from Prescott, north of Phoenix. His ranch is in the high desert – too high for the Saguaro cactus that we think of when we think of the desert southwest. A few years ago, my brother and I were riding near his place, and as usually, we were riding through scrubby bushes that were not much more than 3-4 feet high. There was nothing taller as far as we could see, until we came upon a tree, about 15-20 feet tall, green and full. I asked Jon about it, and his quick reply was that there must be a spring there. Continue...

Text: John 4:5-42

The county of Derbyshire lies near the middle of England. In her book, Sacred Spaces, Margaret Silf tells the story of a time nearly 350 years ago, when there was a wave of bubonic plague swept through the region, and one village, Eyam, found itself with many sick residents. The community agreed on a course of selflessness to protect the surrounding communities. They quarantined themselves, and created a boundary of stones around the perimeter of the town; one of the markers being the town well. People from the surrounding villages would bring food, and medication and news to the boundary edge and leave them there, where the healthy folks in town would retrieve them. It is not hard to imagine what mixed feelings might accompany a walk to the well under these circumstances – knowing that some of your family members, as well as your neighbors, were dangerously ill, wondering whether you’d be the next one to get sick, hoping that the people you love could survive, wishing that you had more strength and hope to nourish your walk and the tasks that await you back at the house, and feeling so grateful to those people in neighboring towns who had left some bread, some cheese, and news of the outside world.
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Texts: Joshua 24:13-28, Mark 8:27-38

My folks have a summer cottage in the Poconos on a small lake. Before it was a small lake, it was a smaller pond, but about 60 years ago, the pond had been enlarged to become Whitney Lake, about a mile long and half mile across. As a child, I fished and boated a lot on the Lake – but there were a lot of tree stumps in the Lake, about 10 feet out from shore typically, which remained from the enlarging process. It was easy to lose fishing lures on those stumps. Occasionally, if you hit just right, you could get a rowboat or canoe stuck there, on a stump. Eventually, using an oar or paddle you could get loose, but it was kind of a nuisance. And bringing the boat back to our dock was a precision operation – missing a stump on the left and then another on the right – and finally finessing in to the dock. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 50:1-6, Mark 9:2-9

If you’ve ever seen the movie The Sound of Music, I’m sure you remember the opening scene – Julie Andrews as the young nun, Maria, running along the hilltop singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music….” Although it was a Hollywood movie about an Austrian nun, that scene was a wonderful depiction of Celtic spirituality. Continue...

Texts: Mark 1:29-39, Isaiah 40:21-31

This is an interesting little vignette in the life and ministry of Jesus – in this morning’s reading from Mark, we have a marvelous slice of his life: he heals, he shares a meal, he casts out demons, he prays, he interacts with his disciples, he travels, he teaches. Tucked into the middle of all of this activity, Jesus got up very early while it was still very dark, and he went to a deserted place and he prayed. We often talk about what is different among the Gospel accounts, but this is something that we understand from all four Gospels: Jesus was a person of prayer. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us about the habit he had of withdrawing by himself to a quiet place to pray – and John’s Gospel includes a long prayer, in which we can see the intimacy that Jesus shares with God in his prayer. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20

We’ve all heard this story many times – Jesus comes to the Sea of Galilee where he finds Peter and Andrew, James and John. “Come and I will make you fish for people,” says Jesus, and they follow him. And we marvel that these fishermen have now become evangelists. Continue...

Texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51, Psalm 139:1-18

He said, “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth,” but Archimedes is not so much known for moving the earth as he is for taking a bath. “Eureka!” is what he is supposed to have cried as he ran into the street, naked and dripping wet, eureka being Greek for “I found it!” Archimedes lived in the 3rd century BCE, and was an advisor to King Hiero of Syracuse. The king was having a new gold crown made for him and was concerned that the maker of the crown might make the crown out of a combination of less valuable metals instead. The king had asked Archimedes to develop a method to determine whether or not the crown was pure gold. Archimedes had realized, as he got into the bathtub, and the volume of his body displaced water that spilled onto the floor that the key was in the relationship between the weight of the crown and its volume – gold being heavier than silver. He filled a jar of water to the brim, dropped the crown into it, and measured the amount of water that was displaced. Then, he refilled the jar to the brim, and dropped a piece of gold the same weight as the crown into the jar, reasoning that if the crown were pure gold, the same amount of water should overflow again. It did not, and the king was able to determine that he had been cheated. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 29, Mark 1:4-11

New Year’s Eve, the manager of a construction firm in Ediburgh went to a costume party. The man, named Torvald Alexander, decided that he would honor his Norwegian first name by dressing as Thor, the Norse god of thunder – so he made a costume with a breastplate and winged helmet out of tinfoil, and a red cape, and had a fine time at the party. On the way home, as he neared his apartment, he could see that someone was inside, and so he ran to the apartment and ran in with his cape streaming behind him. The would-be burglar was apparently quite startled by seeing the Norse god of thunder charging at him, and so he jumped out the window and ran to safety, leaving his shoes and all of Torvald’s belongings behind. When gods walk the earth, things can get surprising. Continue...

Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14; John 1:1-18

The holiday season is winding down…after worship today, we will “undecorate” the sanctuary. And those who have traveled for the holidays will return, if they haven’t already. People who have come home will go back, people who have left home to visit will return. And for many people, figuring out which of these groups they are is not easy. Continue...