Texts: Isaiah 25:6-9; Luke 24:13-35

It was 1979. I was almost 24, living in Chicago, and my parents had gone to Norway for a vacation. I thought it would be fun to meet their plane when they came home, even though they live outside Philadelphia, so I flew out there, my plane arriving about 30 minutes before theirs. Everything went right on schedule, and soon I was seeing my Mom and Dad walk out of customs. I was so excited at this surprise – and I walked up to my Mom and said, “Hi!” She stared at me… and turned away. I touched my Dad’s elbow to get his attention and said, “Hi!” He looked at me as if I might try to sell him a flower, said “hello…” and walked away. Hmmm, I thought, not at ALL the response I was looking for. Frankly, I felt a little hurt. While I hadn’t seen my Dad for 18 months, I had seen Mom about 6 weeks earlier, and I am their only daughter…. So I followed them out to the curb, waited for them to put down their bags, planted myself right in front of both of them and said, “Mom, Dad…hi!” They looked at me, and then there was a shudder of recognition as they both realized who I was…and we had the joyful reunion I had expected. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 118:1, 2, 19-29; Luke 19:28-40

It’s very hard for us to experience this Gospel story as it was first experienced – we know that Easter is next Sunday, and we know what has to happen before Easter. So for us, there is a certain irony in the Palm Sunday story, a certain poignancy… a wish that Jesus really could ride into the city of Jerusalem in triumph, and that the fullness of the Kingdom of God would follow. Continue...

Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 18:15-17

As many of you know, I have a son attending college in Minnesota at St. Olaf College. I was driving to pick him up for a visit home in late January, when I noticed that I was losing air in my right rear tire. I stopped in Red Wing, and settled in at the tire store with the dog to wait for the tire repair. While I was there, a man drove in with a van and came inside to inquire about replacing a tire. The store manager showed him a tire, and the man asked “Don’t you have anything bigger?” The manager explained that this was the same size tire as was currently on the van, And the fellow replied, “I’d like something bigger – I want people to know that a MAN is driving.” And as I worked very hard to suppress a giggle, I thought – someone has a self esteem problem.
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Texts: Romans 7:14-25, John 3:1-10

“I’m Susan, and I am an addict” – seven days a week, at all hours of the day, in this community and throughout the world, people at 12-step meetings introduce themselves this way, naming their own addiction: alcoholism, gambling, compulsive overeating, shopping, sex, narcotics, co-dependence, workaholism, and many others. I found one list of 32 types of 12-step groups. There are hundreds of thousands of 12-step meetings every week, empowering people to recover from addiction. Continue...

Texts: Ephesians 4:22-5:2; Matthew 5:21-26

We all know the feeling – whether it’s because of something someone says, or another driver being careless, or hearing a commentator we disagree with on TV or even because of something we ourselves did, or didn’t do, again – suddenly, our stomach clenches, our jaw tightens, our brow furrows, and there may be an inner intensity. We’re angry. And who knows what will happen next? We may say something we regret, or we squash down the words, feeling the tension increase, or we lash out, feeling powerful. And then the consequences roll in – we might be in a back and forth that never seems to settle anything; other people may be upset and/or hurt, and sometimes, things fall apart: a friendship is lost, or violence occurs, or any number of possibilities. As Rabbi David Wolfe of Sinai Temple said on the History Channel’s production of the Anger episode in its Seven Deadly Sins series, “Anger is like a boiling teakettle; when it overflows you have no idea who will get burned or where it will go.” Continue...

Texts: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 12:22-31

During the First World War, the army fliers developed this philosophy: “When you are in the air you will either be flying straight or turning over. If you are flying straight, there is no cause to worry. If you are turning over, one of two things is true: you will either right the plane or fail. If you right the plane, there is no cause to worry. If you fail, one of two things is certain: you will either be injured slightly or injured seriously. If you are injured slightly, there is no cause to worry. If you are injured seriously, one of two things will happen: you will either die or recover. If you recover, there is no cause to worry; and if you die, you can’t.”
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Texts: Romans 12:1-2; Luke 10:38-42

Going fast was his life, and for Nodar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old luge athlete from the Republic of Georgia, it was also his death. Whether it was the track, or his own error that was the critical issue, his death was ultimately caused by what is known in traffic violations as “traveling too fast for conditions”. For quite a while, many of us have found that life often seems to be a constant state of traveling too fast for conditions.
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Texts: 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

We hear a lot about information overload these days, and so I was particularly impressed by something I heard yesterday at a Presbytery meeting. The Presbytery’s Associate Executive told us that, quoting Clay Shirky, “There has been information overload since the invention of the Gutenberg press. By 1500, there was more published than anyone could read in a lifetime.” So the information overload problem is not new. Nor is it, Shirky says, the real problem. The real problem is “filter failure” – the failure of systems to screen what information comes before us. Two examples of filters show what he’s talking about – publishers filter information because they don’t publish everything. They make decisions about what to publish so that we aren’t inundated with everything that gets written. However, as the internet has lowered the cost barriers to publishing information, publishers no longer are effectively performing that function, so another example of a filter is found on the internet – the spam filter on our email. It screens emails coming into our inbox so that we don’t have to individually sort all the mail that comes to us. Continue...

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

Although the text doesn’t say so, it seems clear that today’s Gospel story is set in Capernaum, where Peter lived, and where Jesus was based during his ministry. I went to Capernaum last summer, and it was very moving. It is all in ruins, of course, but you get a good sense of the distances. And while many of the sacred places in Israel are known as “traditional sites” (in the sense that we don’t really know whether a story happened here, but the tradition is that it was in this place), in Capernaum, we actually know where some of the primary sites are. So let me take you there…Capernaum is on the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Gennesaret. It is a coastal town. The home of Peter, a stone house, is very near the lakeshore (for remember, the Sea of Galilee is actually a freshwater lake), perhaps 100-150 feet off the shore, with no buildings in between. And as you walk inland from the lakeshore, after passing the home of Peter, you come to the synagogue. Now, the ruins that are there now are the ruins of the synagogue that was built later on the same site where the synagogue had been in the time of Jesus. When we see the synagogue, we are not seeing the actual building where Jesus worshipped, but it is in the same place. Continue...

Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

There is an old Cherokee tale about a Grandfather whose grandson came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice. The old Grandfather said, “Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. Continue...

Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:4-26, Luke 4:14-30

I heard an interesting story this week– Dan and Diane Dieterich described how several years ago, they went to Disneyworld in Florida. Dan was not, apparently, content to merely watch the fun, but wanted to participate. So he dressed all in white, and carried in a small hand puppet – a black bear named Billy Bear. Billy was somewhat shy and tended to hide in the crook of Dan’s arm, but every so often, especially when he heard small children, he would peer out, over Dan’s arm, and look at the kids, sometimes even waving, as his courage grew. The children loved it. Some of them found the larger animals somewhat intimidating – Goofy is something like 7 feet tall – but Billy Bear was more accessible, and inviting. Continue...

Texts:  John 2:1-11; Isaiah 62:1-5
 
The Bible has a lot to say about justice:
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Texts:  Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22
 
Perhaps you’ve heard the old story about the minister who had a problem with squirrels in the church.  And so she consulted with her colleagues, and tried all their suggestions:  she set traps, called in animal control, took her dog to church with her for a while, and still the squirrels stayed in church.  Finally, at a clergy lunch, someone asked her about the squirrels, and she was glad to report that they were gone.  “How did you do it?” her colleagues asked.  “Oh it was simple,” she replied.  “We just baptized them, confirmed them, and we haven’t seen them since.”
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Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6, John 1:1-18
 
Don’t beginnings fascinate us?  Surely we know we are entering a place of wonder when we hear words such as “Once upon a time…” or “In the beginning….”  And our own new beginnings are places of wonder, too – a new year, a new home, a new job, a new chapter in our lives – each of these seems to hold such promise.  There’s a sense of possibility and hope.  And so here we are at the beginning of a new journey around the sun on this fragile planet, and it is a time of new hope for many of us.  And this Sunday, the Gospel reading for our New Year beginning is the beginning of the Gospel of John – a beginning that, in approaching the beginning of Jesus, takes us back to the beginning of beginnings.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.   These verses have inspired many, and also have confounded many – what does it mean? 
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