May 29, 2016 2nd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 7:1-10  (The Message)

1-5 When he finished speaking to the people, he entered Capernaum. A Roman captain there had a servant who was on his deathbed. He prized him highly and didn’t want to lose him. When he heard Jesus was back, he sent leaders from the Jewish community asking him to come and heal his servant. They came to Jesus and urged him to do it, saying, “He deserves this. He loves our people. He even built our meeting place.”
6-8 Jesus went with them. When he was still quite far from the house, the captain sent friends to tell him, “Master, you don’t have to go to all this trouble. I’m not that good a person, you know. I’d be embarrassed for you to come to my house, even embarrassed to come to you in person. Just give the order and my servant will get well. I’m a man under orders; I also give orders. I tell one soldier, ‘Go,’ and he goes; another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
9-10 Taken aback, Jesus addressed the accompanying crowd: “I’ve yet to come across this kind of simple trust anywhere in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know about God and how he works.” When the messengers got back home, they found the servant up and well.


This is a story primarily about faith, not faith healing.  It is an example of someone from the outside whose faith put to shame those on the inside. He was a Roman, a centurion, yet a sensitive man who was open to the mystery and miracles of life.  He cares about his slave enough to send friends to Jesus to see if something might happen which could be called nothing short of a miracle.  Such faith IS a miracle!

This story is a miracle of healing which points to the miracle of faith which is to be remembered and duplicated.  A faith which is open to miracles and leaves room in life for the mysterious presence of a loving God.







"Miracles take place not
because they are preformed,
but because they are believed,"  
Martin Luther













Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, I believe in miracles even when I can’t grasp the thought that they do happen.  Help me to believe in miracles, and be a miracle.”

May 22, 2016 Holy Trinity Sunday

John 16:12-15  (The Message)

12-15 “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed,

If I go fishing in Canada,  I want a guide with me but I do not want the guide fishing for me.  Even if I lose the big one.

Life is like fishing - we often need a guide but the guide cannot live for us.

For life is something we discover in the process of living.
We learn as we live.
We have to experience what we know before we can know it.
We often have to be vulnerable to discover what we don’t know.

Faith is like this too.  The Friend (Holy Spirit) guides us into the truth of that which we could never discover by ourselves.  As we live by faith,  we discover something of what it all means - yet the mystery is far beyond our wildest imagination.  It is always ‘yonder’.







 “She was a believer and knew -
so much of what she believed
was yonder - always yonder.”
Carl Sandberg on Lincoln’s mother








Prayer thought for the week:  "Lord, guide me into that which is too much for me to dare believe by myself.  So much is "yonder - always younger."

May 15, 2016 Day of Pentecost

John 14:23-27 (The Message)

25-27 “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace.

We humans have the great capacity to remember, which both enriches and empowers our lives. “Remember when…” begins a journey into the past which carries with it either great pain or great joy.  Even when it is pain,
it enriches our lives.

The last words my brother spoke to me, as we were saying goodby -
he was going back into the Army, recalled for Korea;  I was going back to college - were, “You should think about being a Pastor.”  There was no reason for him to say it.  We had not been talking about it.  He just said it
as we parted.  And I quickly forgot about it.

Following his death due to wounds in combat in Korea, I remembered his words.  I could not get them out of my memory.  They empowered me, painful though they were, to begin the journey which has led me where I never dreamed I would go.  I remembered and lived out the memory.

This is what Pentecost is all about.  Remembering what has been so we can be more alive in what is yet to be.  We are not to live in the past; we are to remember it and be empowered to live in the present, doing what we are called to do in our day, living creatively, daring to try new things, even change old things.
Indeed, God’s spirit works in and through our capacity to remember.  God calls to our remembrance that which we have known in the past so we can be better equipped to live in the present.

Prayer thought for the week:  "Lord, help me to remember those moments which have directed my life and enriched my living."

May 8, 2016 7th Sunday of Easter

John 17:20-23  (The Message)

I’m (Jesus) praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me.

These words of Jesus last recorded prayer end with a challenge which
gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian.  It isn’t sameness.
It isn’t agreeing on every thing.  It is to love as we have been loved.

What ever else this means, it does mean we cannot give up on love as we seek to make a difference in a world so full of hate.

Bertrand Russell, a very vocal opponent of Christianity said it well:
“There are certain things that our age needs...The root of the matter is a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words.  The thing I mean - please forgive me for mentioning it - is love, Christian love, or compassion.  If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, and imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”




"Someday, after we have mastered the winds,
the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love:
and then for the second time in the history
of the world man will have discovered fire!"
Teilhard de Chardin







Prayer thought for the week:  "Lord, help me to not give up on love this week...and the next...and the next.  You never did!"

May 1, 2016 6th Sunday of Easter

John 14:23-29   (The Message)

23-24 “Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood! Not loving me means not keeping my words. The message you are hearing isn’t mine. It’s the message of the Father who sent me.
25-27 “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
28 “You’ve heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m on my way to the Father because the Father is the goal and purpose of my life. 29 “I’ve told you this ahead of time, before it happens, so that when it does happen, the confirmation will deepen your belief in me.

Saying goodbye is often difficult.  This is the setting or our text - Jesus saying goodbye.
The disciples don’t get it; so he tells them again.   They hear the words but still do not really understand, for it has not happened yet.  Only when it happens will they know.
So Jesus leaves them with a word they can hang on to - love.

Love is the most important word in the Bible and in our lives.
It is enough to say, “God is love.”
And to repeat over and over and over again, as the Psalmist does,
that “his steadfast love endures forever.”  It is enough to know that I am loved.
Then I can make it through even the roughest of days!

We are to obey Jesus words because we love doing it.  We love doing it because we have first been loved into doing it.  To obey out of love is to love obeying!

We are to be amateurs about love.
That is, be “those who do something
because they love doing it.”










Prayer thought for the week:    “Lord, help me obey one commandment ahead of all others -  to love as I have been loved by You!”