August 12, 2018 12th Sunday After Pentecost

John 6:35,36,41,42 (The Message)

35 Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever. 36 I have told you this explicitly because even though you have seen me in action, you don't really believe me…. 41 At this, because he said, "I am the Bread that came down from heaven," the Jews started arguing over him: 42 "Isn't this the son of Joseph? Don't we know his father? Don't we know his mother? How can he now say, 'I came down out of heaven' and expect anyone to believe him?"

Jesus was too human for the people of his day.  He was Joseph’s son who lived in their midst.  He was too human, too real, too common for them to believe he was God’s Son.

We also struggle with things of God being too human.  The truth is, the most spiritual (God like) things we can do are often the most human.  We dare not be afraid to be human for that is the essence of what it means to be spiritual (eat of the Bread of Life).

Every time we touch intimately, lovingly, compassionately in the midst of the pain and joy of being human, God is there with life giving bread to impart eternal life.  This is how human God is!






”To be human is to be spiritual;
to be spiritual is to be human.”
Ron Hinrichs











Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, you created me ‘human’, with your spark of life
in me.  Help me to discover the joy of being human.  And discover how spiritual it is
to lovingly bring joy to others in our human journey. “

Aug. 5, 2018 11th Sunday After Pentecost

John 6:26,27  (The Message)

26 Jesus answered, "You've come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs - and for free. 27 "Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last."


The people in our text were looking for the easy way out.  They had a free meal (the feeding of the 5000) and they wanted a free meal;  a life without difficulty, pain, suffering.  They came to Jesus for the wrong thing.

They wanted Jesus “not because (they) saw signs, but because (they) ate their fill of the loaves.”

They wanted Jesus for the wrong reason - and so often do we.
We come not because we want to be “renewed in our spirit”.    We come because we want to have our bases covered. We want Jesus as an insurance policy against bad things happening to us.

But this is not how it is with Jesus.  God did not send Jesus to dwell among us so life could be a bed of roses.  God sent Jesus to dwell among us so that life could be different - strangely, powerfully, eternally different!  For strange as it may sound it is true:  “The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever.”







“I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE.”
                         Jesus






Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, feed me with your eternal love so I hunger or thirst no more, ever.”

July 29, 2018 10th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 6:53-56  (The Message)

53 They beached the boat at Gennesaret and tied up at the landing. 54 As soon as they got out of the boat, word got around fast. 55 People ran this way and that, bringing their sick on stretchers to where they heard he was. 56 Wherever he went, village or town or country crossroads, they brought their sick to the marketplace and begged him to let them touch the edge of his coat - that's all. And whoever touched him became well.

Jesus did heal.  Miracles did and do happen.  But they are not always obvious, because some times they happen in a different way.

“A miraculous healing of a physical illness is wonderful. But even more impressive … is the way God's grace gives some people the courage to live creatively, and even joyously, within their suffering. The profound faith of those who live with crippling affliction or disease-ridden bodies does not look spectacular to many. But their confidence in God and love for others are as beautiful a miracle as any physical one you're apt to ever see.”
Peter W. Marty







"There are two ways to live:
you can live as if nothing is
a miracle; you can live as if
everything is a miracle."
            Albert Einstein









Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, sometimes it seems that miracles never happen.  Help me to see the miracles that do happen, even though they seem hidden.”

July 22, 2018 9
th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 6:30-32  (The Message)

30 The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. 31 Jesus said, "Come off by yourselves; let's take a break and get a little rest." For there was constant coming and going. They didn't even have time to eat. 32 So they got in the boat and went off to a remote place by themselves.

We need to spend time alone so we can truly be with others in compassion.
Alone time feeds our souls; energizes us; fills us; renews us.
If I don’t take time for myself; I don’t have much to give you either.

For as Henri Nouwen writes in “The Way Of The Heart”,

“Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry. …(for)
solitude molds self-righteous persons into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their whole lives become ministry.”
pp. 20,22




“Compassion is the fruit of
solitude…”  Henri  Nouwen








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to find some “time alone” in my busy week,  so I can hear your “still small voice” and be more loving when busy.”

July 15, 2018  8th Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 6:14-29

(Because of the length of this message I ask you to dig out your Bible and read this story - it is the beheading of John the Baptist.  And because I have never preached on it in 35 years, I turn to a current Associate Professor of Preaching at Luther Seminary Karoline Lewis for her take on this powerful text. )

“It would be all too easy to pass over this incident as simply an historical marker in the life of Jesus. This is what happened to John the Baptist. That’s unfortunate. But we act out such dismissal at our own peril. In doing so, we pardon ourselves from our own culpability in brushing under the table the risks of the Gospel. Risks that challenge the powers that be are certain to result in risks to your own survival.

Because here is a story that reveals just how dysfunctional and distorted perceived power can be. It’s an important warning at this point in the Gospel. … that what Jesus has come to challenge, upend, question, is those persons and those empires who rule by and uphold values completely antithetical to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom in Jesus.

It’s a critical warning.

And yet, we are witnesses to a daily unfolding of excuses for distortions and misappropriations of power. Propping up potentates for the sake of preserving supremacy. Overlooking the most observable, most obvious fallacies and fallacious acts as acceptable and as actual acts of accountability for the sake of…of…what? A crucial element of John’s beheading is the way in which it calls out an utter void of responsibility. Power, institutions, systems, including the church, that do not acknowledge accountability and responsibility for their actions, that are incapable of justifying and validating theologically and biblically their decisions, should expect to be notified by someone like Mark.

Do not let this pericope pass you by without asking yourself, … does my ministry (faith) ever warrant my head on a platter? Or, do I avoid any kind of proclamation that might lead to my own beheading, metaphorical or otherwise?”

Karoline Lewis

Pope Benedict XVI












Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, forgive me my fear of having to pay a price for following you.  Give me strength to speak the truth in love.”

July 8, 2018 7th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 6:1-6  (The Message)

1 He left there and returned to his hometown. His disciples came along. 2 On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. "We had no idea he was this good!" they said. "How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?" 3 But in the next breath they were cutting him down: "He's just a carpenter - Mary's boy. We've known him since he was a kid. We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters. (And they took offense at him.)  Who does he think he is?" They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further. 4 Jesus told them, "A prophet has little honor in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child." 5 Jesus wasn't able to do much of anything there - he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them, that's all. 6 He couldn't get over their stubbornness.”


When God comes to us in too human a way (Jesus) and challenges us to change our ways, we too “take offense at Him”.
We like to keep God boxed up in our rituals where we are in control.
But God will not let us do that.  God is not a rabbits foot, a good luck charm, an easy way out of the difficulties of life.
God desires to enter into the changes and chances of life with us, and there make a difference,
not by offering new power or easy answers which eliminates all the bad and protects us from suffering, but offering a power make perfect in weakness - the power of love…of grace which is sufficient for all our needs.





                                                                                                                             
“God desires to enter into the changes
and chances of life and make a difference”









Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, be with me in the ‘changes and chances’ of this week and
help me make a difference in someone’s life.”

June 24, 2018 5th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 4:35-41  (The Message)

35 Late that day he said to them, "Let's go across to the other side." 36 They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. 37 A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. 38 And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, "Teacher, is it nothing to you that we're going down?" 39 Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, "Quiet! Settle down!" The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. 40 Jesus reprimanded the disciples: "Why are you such cowards? Don't you have any faith at all?" 41 They were in absolute awe, staggered. "Who is this, anyway?" they asked. "Wind and sea at his beck and call!"

We look for signs of God caring for us by how God uses his power for us - in miraculous ways.  Perhaps we need to look again at how God cares for us, not in miracles, but in the miracle of our faith.

What if the disciples had fought the storm rather then wake Jesus, trusting that they could do it? What if they had made the miracle happen (getting through the storm) by trusting that Jesus did care about them and trusting their own God given strength to overcome?  It would still have been a miracle!

This is not to diminish the uniqueness of what Jesus did; and the sign it is for who he is!
It is to say that there are miracles of God in the ordinary, not just the extraordinary things of life.

Jesus calls for the faith which empowers one to believe strong enough to create one’s own miracle, by not letting fear immobilize and paralyze; by daring to believe against all odds that God is for us, not against us. always!
Don’t wait for God to do it for you.  Ask God to do it with you and see what miracles can be created when you dare to believe that asleep or awake, God does care for you.






“There are miracles of God
in the ordinary, not just the
extraordinary things of life.”










Prayer though for the week:  “Lord, help me be a miracle this week, in ordinary ways which help get through the storms of life.”