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2nd Sunday of Easter - Reflection 8:30

  Well, Here We AreEaster 2 (C) – 2007 Mary K. Morrison Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Well, here we are again on Thomas Sunday. Good old doubting Thomas. Thomas could be the patron saint of modern people. Thomas was reported to have been a twin, and it’s possible he was an identical twin—as such, he would have known all about mistaken identity. He would have known how easy it is to be wrong about something, even when we see it with our own eyes. He couldn’t take the disciples’ word about having seen Jesus alive; he needed proof; he needed to be sure. Jesus says to Thomas,  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  That would be us. We didn’t make it to the empty tomb, didn’t see the angels, didn’t hear Jesus call us by name in the garden. We weren’t in the upper room with the other disciples when they got to see Jesus. When we hear the gospel stories, we sometimes identify with the characters in them. Are we like...
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Easter Day

  Matt 28:1-10 Alleluia! Christ is risen!   He has risen indeed Alleluia! Today is the very best day of the church year.   It is a day to throw a party.   We walked the long wilderness road of Lent, we have sat in the quiet, we have listened and sung and prayed, and finally wilderness road has led us home.   And now it is time to celebrate, to cast off the burdens of Lent, to break out the flowers and the finery, to turn up the organ and bring back the alleluia songs, to eat and drink and give away candy and to sing as loud as you can.   And most importantly, today is the day we proclaim Christ’s victory over death for all to see and here. It is the day we tell the Easter story once again, where we proclaim that the tomb is empty and our Lord once crucified and dead has conquered death and been raised to new life.   And it is a day where we celebrate that through his death and resurrection Jesus opened the way to eternal life to all people. ...
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Palm Sunday

  Matthew 21:2-11 Today is Palm Sunday.   The first day of Holy Week.   Today is the day that stands as bridge between the season of Lent and the deeper parts of Holy Week.   And this year, you will notice that things are just a bit different.   Usually, the Palm parts of Palm Sunday are only a few minutes long, with the day shifting pretty quickly away from the festivity of the Palm procession to the reading of the Passion story which we also usually do on this day.   Shouts of ‘Hosanna’ turn quickly to shouts of ‘Crucify Him’.   But in this our season in the wilderness, we are going to take things a little bit slower this year.   Because the Palms are important too.   The path out of the wilderness is nearly as important as where it ultimately leads.   And so, we are joining our friends in Massachusetts and in other Episcopal congregations around the country in participating in the trial use of a new Palm Sunday liturgy which moves...
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5th Sunday in Lent

  John 11:1-12:1 As those of you who read the eBlast well know, I love this story.   I love it so much, literally this is my favorite chapter in the whole bible.   And I am luckily that this is one of the very few stories in the bible that appears in the lectionary twice.   Here and every 3 rd year on All Saints Day.   But still, that is not nearly enough.   I could preach 50 sermons on this story, 100 even.   But today is special, because today may be the only time when I am bold enough to read the whole story in worship.   Because this year, we are in the wilderness.   This year, we have the time and the space to read the whole thing and to sit with the really big stories and the complicated and messy business of salvation.   This year, we get to hear the whole truth.   All 58 verses.   And like Nicodemus at the beginning of our Lenten journey, I am willing to wager that most of you have never heard the whole story, most...
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4th Sunday in Lent - Reflection

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”,  Joseph Peters-Mathews   RCL:   1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-4, Psalm 23  Today’s gospel text is a lot: a lot of words and a lot of concepts. Within John’s narrative, today’s gospel comes from what scholars call “the Book of Signs,” John 1-12. In this section of the gospel, Jesus—God’s word made flesh, the light which the darkness could not overcome—is traveling around, performing miracles. These miracles are “signs” because they cause some people to come to have faith in him.  Later on, Jesus will say that those who believe without having seen are even more blessed.  As Jesus walks, he encounters a blind man. The disciples, operating under the assumption expressed in Exodus that “The sins of the father are visited upon the children,” ask Jesus whether this man’s blindness is the result of his sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus tells the disciples, “Neither. This man is blind so that God’s glory can b...
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3rd Sunday in Lent

John 4:5-42 So now we have reached the third week of our Lenten journey through the wilderness and we have come to our third major story in our series of biblical stories about transformation and the way our relationship with God has the power to change everything.   And this week we heard the story of the Woman at the Well.   Once again, the story is long and complicated and dense, but at least this week, we have a story we know, or at least we think we do.   And also this story, more than the others is actually set in the wilderness, of sorts.   I mean they are right outside of town, but at the start of our story, a very human Jesus is sitting by a well and he is tired and thirsty.   And this is part of the power of the wilderness.   It draws our attention to our humanity, to the urgency of our basic needs, to the reality that self-sufficiency is always an illusion.   And this wilderness need gives him the opportunity to start a conversation wi...
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2nd Sunday of Lent

  John 3:1-17; 7:36-53; 19:38-42 This week is the First week in a series of major stories we will be hearing from the Gospel of John for the rest of this Lenten season.   Each week for the next four weeks we will be hearing these long and complicated stories about how meeting Jesus changes the lives of 4 different people that he encounters during his ministry.   These stories are rich and beautiful and allow us to see examples of how people’s lives can be transformed by their relationship with Jesus and how they grow and change from these encounters. This week we begin our journey with the full story of Nicodemus.   How many of you have never heard the second two parts of this story before?   The regular lectionary only includes the first bit from John chapter 3 and I am willing to wager that the vast majority of even life-long Christians don’t know the rest of it.   And I mean granted, this first part of John chapter 3 is a great story all on its own, ...
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