July 5, 2020 5th Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 11:28-30   (The Message)

28 "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. 29 Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.”

 (The New RSV)

 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

 “My Yoke Is Easy”

Catchy slogans are not necessarily true - just catchy.
These words of Jesus sound like a catchy slogan - but their not.

Like the slogan from Boy’s Town - “He ain’t heavy Father, he’s my brother.”  they remind us that the yoke which is easy and the burden which is light is so NOT because little is demanded, but because much is first given.

The yoke of Jesus is the commitment to love; it is the call to be kind, loving, good, merciful, just as we have received mercy.  It is discovering the “unforced rhythms of grace”.

Bearing one another's burdens in love is light!  No matter how heavy it gets!  To do this we first have to know we are loved.  For only the loved can so love.  God first loves us; then God demands much from us.  And the much is easy, for it is given in love.  This is the yoke which is easy and the burden which is light.



Bearing one another’s
 burdens in love is light!
 No matter how heavy it gets!






Prayer thought for the week:  “ Help me to be a bearer of burdens in love, no matter how heavy it gets.”

June 28, 2020 Pentecost 4

Matthew 10:40-42  (The Message)

 40 "We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. 41 Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help.

This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. It's best to start small. 42 Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing."

Most of the time it is the small things which make a big difference.
Unnoticed by most, unheralded by the media, not even posted on Facebook.
Just an anonymous act of kindness which brighteners someone's life and lifts their spirit.
When this happens God smiles and says "way to go!  Keep it up.  You too will be blessed by your kindness.”

We are seeing a lot of this in these difficult times.  Our news which is mostly bad, often ends with what is called ‘soft’ news.  Someone doing something small which amounts to a lot in someone else’s life.  This is the blessing hidden in the face of struggle and it is what God calls us all to do.  As Mother Teresa said,  do “small things with great love!





“We do not know the limits
of the redeeming power
of the small.
Perhaps there are none.”
Walter Wink







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to remember that little things
are big to you…and make a difference in your Kingdom on earth.”

June 21, 2020 3rd Sunday After Pentecost

 Matthew 10:24

“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master.  It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master.”

“What would Jesus do?” may sound like an over simplified question to direct our life of faith.
Yet it isn’t.  It is right on.  For as those who seek to follow Jesus we are to be his presence in the hear and now.

We are not to run away from doing justice when it is dangerous.
We are not to quit caring when it seems hopeless.
We are not to give up when hope seems beyond our reach.

We are to be Jesus when no one wants Jesus around.

Like the young man down south in the days of our struggles with integration who was interviewed by the Psychiatrist  Robert Coles as to why he was marching for the blacks in his community.    He replied:  (And he was rejected by his family because of this.)

“I don’t know why I put myself on the line.
I don’t know why I said no to segregation.
I’m just another white Southerner,
and I wasn’t brought up to love integration.
But I was brought up to love Jesus Christ,
and when I saw the police of this city
use dogs on people,
I asked myself what Jesus Christ would have
thought and He would have done
- and that’s all I know about how I CAME TO BE HERE,
 ON THE FIRING LINE.”

Indeed, to follow Jesus will take us to the firing line of justice, compassion, and acceptance of that which we never thought possible.  For “The process of signing on with Jesus consists of relinquishing what is old and treasured and receiving what is promised in the goodness of God.”
               Dr. Walter Brueggemann, OT Theologian




“All sports records will inevitable be broken,
 but the day after they are, the world won’t
have changed.  But every day you speak up
about injustice, the next day the world may
be just a little better for someone.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar





Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, may someone be even just a little better off because I seek to follow you.”

June 14,2020 2nd Sunday After Pentecost

  Matthew 9:36
 “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Early in his ministry Jesus set the tone for all that he was to be.  He was to be compassionate!  For he came to represent a God who is compassionate.

Compassionate!  What a powerful word.

We know God best and we know the best about God through the word compassion.  For the most and the best that we can say about God...the first and the last word about God is, as the Psalmist repeats over and over and over again, that God “is gracious and merciful, (that is full of compassion) slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love… The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”  Ps. 145:8,9

Is this not the heart of the scriptures testimony about God?
That God is not against us but for us;
God is not indifferent to our suffering, but is in it with us;
God is not angry with us because God delights in being angry, but because God loves us too much to not be angry.  And God will not remain angry for ever; for God’s anger is preceded as well as followed by compassion.  Even in moments of wrath, God’s love remains alive and primary!

We struggle to try put life into perspective.  To try see what it means beyond what it seems to mean.  To find something of God’s goodness in everything and dare believe that to walk with God is to walk with compassion at the center of our lives.

Even in a time of uncertainty - the pandemic we are now experiencing - we trust that God will not forsake us for God is in this with us.  God didn’t cause it to punish us.  God can use it to call us to live our lives with more compassion for others, for nature, and for all that is.

Where would we be in the end of the 21st century if compassion was more a part of our living and our being?  It is a question worth asking and struggling with as we walk through these days and determine how tomorrow will be.

Will we be like sheep without a shepherd or will we be like sheep who know a shepherd  who says, “Be merciful (compassionate) as your heavenly father is merciful (compassionate).”  Luke 6:36

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, as you are compassionate toward all, help me to be compassionate in my words and deeds, following in your footsteps.”

June 7, 2020 The Holy Trinity

Matthew 28:16-20  (The Message)

16 Meanwhile, the eleven disciples were on their way to Galilee, headed for the mountain Jesus had set for their reunion. 17 The moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally. 18 Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: "God authorized and commanded me to commission you: 19 Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 20 Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”

The Holy Trinity is a mystery.  After all is said and done to help us try understand it,
the mystery still remains.  Which is the way it should be.

Without mystery God becomes something less then God.
Without mystery life looses something deep and beautiful.

On Holy Trinity Sunday we celebrate this mystery as we worship God the Father, creator of all things; God the Son, Redeemer of all humankind, and God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of all who believe.  (And maybe even those who don’t seem to believe.)
“Great indeed…is the mystery of our religion.”  I Tim 3:16




“I didn't need to understand the
hypostatic unity of the Trinity;
I just needed to turn my life over
to whoever came up with redwood trees.”
― Anne Lamott,







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, the mystery is great;  the mystery is beautiful;  keep me in awe and alive to mystery.”

May 31, 2020 Day of Pentecost

John 20:19-23  (The Message)

19 Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you." 20 Then he showed them his hands and side. 21 Jesus repeated his greeting: "Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you." 22 Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. 23 "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”


“Love implies forgiveness.  It is hard for us to realize, but actually the only requirement the loving Father places on us, once we come to know Him...is that we forgive as we have been forgiven.”  “The Other Side of Silence”, Morton Kelsey, p. 68

Forgiveness is a gift of God’s spirit.  It is central to ALL that Jesus said and did.
It is central to what the Church is ALL about.  It is a powerful, renewing, uplifting, hope filling, smile producing, releasing gift which in no way is meant to control or dominate the lives of others.  It is meant to set one free to really live, with new choices and chances, and renewed vigor.  We are to work at being forgiving until forgiveness works!

The goal of not forgiving is not to not be forgiving.  The goal of not forgiving is to help the process get to the placed where we can forgive.  For that is what love always wants to do, and must be ready to do.  For we have been forgiven much!







"Love implies forgiveness.”
Morton Kelsey








Prayer thoughts for the week.
Lord help me to:
forgive when I don’t want to but need to.                              
accept forgiveness as vital to a happy life.  (I do blow it a lot.)
love, but not forgive when it becomes more enabling.
work at being forgiven and forgiving until it works.
never give up on forgiveness.

May 24, 2020 Easter 7

John 17: 1-11  (The Message)

1-5 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time.
Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
I glorified you on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What you assigned me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
The very splendor I had in your presence
Before there was a world.
6-8
I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me.
They were yours in the first place;
Then you gave them to me,
And they have now done what you said.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.

Jesus Christ came to make God ‘knowable’; so we might know the one true God.
No one is prevented from knowing God by God.  God does not predestine anyone to blindness and disbelief.  We don’t discover God with our minds alone.  The mystery is too great!  We discover God by trusting the one God sent, Jesus Christ.  And following Him to see what we can see, and find what we can find.   (Isn’t this the way love is too?)

Knowing begins with trust.
Then knowing becomes a matter of obeying, acting on this trust.
When we do we discover how true it really is.
To seek to know is to trust; to trust is to act, to act is to discover - now we know!
To follow Jesus is a journey of discovery.  It is learning who God is.





“And to those who obey Him,
whether they be wise or simple,
He will reveal Himself in the toils,
the conflicts, the sufferings
( and we can add the joys)
which they shall pass through in His fellowship,
and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn
in their own experience Who He is.”
Albert Schweitzer,
“The Search For The Historical Jesus”







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to trust, act, and discover how real you are.”