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10th Sunday after Pentecost - 8:30 Reflection

  Sometimes Thinking…, Proper 13 (A) – 2005 July 31, 2005 Ken Kesselus Sometimes thinking in the Episcopal Church is too sophisticated. Sometimes, we tend to miss simple truths, stated plainly and simply. How many of us would feel comfortable in a congregation where the people express a form of the old time religion? One such church developed a kind of chant that expressed a simple truth. The preacher would shout, “God is good.” The congregation would enthusiastically reply, “All the time.” It was their way of affirming truths about the power of God to provide for God’s people. Is this a fundamental truth of the Christian Gospel? Today we learn anew from today’s Gospel that God is God—that God will provide what we need. We re-learn, in the midst of the Body of Christ, that God will lift up among us resources to accomplish holy and life-giving purposes. In today’s Gospel we encounter hungry people being met by a suggestion from the disciples that Jesus send them away to get somethin...
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9th Sunday After Pentecost

1Kings 3:5-12; Romans 8:26-39 Our season of discipleship is going to take a bit of a turn this week and instead of the Gospel we are going to take a look at our Old Testament Reading from the book of Kings today.   Now I always get a bit excited when I get to talk about this part of the bible because I actually wrote my Masters Thesis on the David Narratives so I have spent more concerted effort studying this part of the Bible than any other.   And well, the story of Saul, David and Solomon is also just a darn good story.   Though honestly a lot more complicated and frankly a heck of a lot racier than most of us would expect from the pages of a Holy Book.   Sure we all probably know a little bit already about David and Solomon.   That they were early kings of Israel and especially favored by God.   I bet everyone here knows the story of David and Goliath.   You might remember that David conquered Jerusalem and that Solomon built the temple.   Or...
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7th Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Today our season of discipleship takes a turn toward growing things.   In gospel story for the week, we hear the first of the many parables that we will hear over the course of the summer that Jesus tells about farming and growing things.   Before the end of the season we will hear about seeds and plants, weeds and shrubs, vineyards and fruit trees.   But today we begin at the beginning with the planting of seeds. Now I have always loved all the agricultural metaphors in the bible.   For you see, my dad grew up on a farm, and was always a farmer at heart, even though we lived in town.   So instead, he turned his attention to gardening.   And he was a professional crop and soil scientist so you would not believe how much he managed to get out of that patch of garden in our yard.   It was quite the serious operation.   And I always loved to ‘help’ him with the garden.   He always had everything carefully planned for ma...
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6th Sunday After Pentecost Morning Prayer Reflection

  Pentecost 6 (A) – Proper 9 [RCL] Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-18 or Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Freedom For   This weekend marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. Two hundred and fifty years. That is a remarkable milestone for a nation! Whatever country we inhabit, whatever our political convictions, it is worth pausing to give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy, for the generations who have sacrificed to preserve them. And, in the United States. for the democratic experiment that has endured longer than many thought possible. But anniversaries are not only occasions for celebration. They are also opportunities for reflection. They invite us to ask not only where we have been, but also who we have become. And so, on this weekend, perhaps the question before us is a simple one: What does freedom actually mean? For 250 years, Americans have debated that questi...
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5th Sunday After Pentecost

Jeremiah 28:5-9; Matt 10:40-42 So I have been thinking a lot this week about who we welcome and what it means to be a faithful community in the midst of difficulty and change.   Because the way of the gospel is and always has been hard and not always the easy or obvious choice.   And our readings today reflect this.   But they are also a bit tricky because both are just little bits of much larger stories that require a bit of context to understand. First, we have this little snippet from Jeremiah and his showdown with the false prophet Hananiah.   And here, God’s people have found themselves in a bit of a tight spot.   The growing Babylonian empire is threatening to swallow the land of Judah and it’s neighbors whole.   The kings and leaders of Judah and their people as a whole have turned away from the one true God to worship other gods and have put their trust in other foreign leaders.   And as a result, the old king and many of the country’s re...
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Holy Trinity Sunday

  Matthew 28:16-20 So Today is Trinity Sunday and it is a big day of transition.   This is in fact the turning of the church year.   For the first half of the church year, we focus on the life of Jesus, the events of Jesus’s time on earth.   We walk alongside Jesus through the preparation for his birth, birth at Christmas, his baptism, the calling of his disciples and start of his ministry.   Then though the Lenten season of preparation for his passion, the hard walk of Holy Week, his death and then resurrection on Easter, which is then followed by his post resurrection appearances and preparation for the post-east world, at Ascension and Pentecost.   Through this time, we get to experience the whole of Jesus’s earthy life in one 6 month cycle every year. Then today, the year turns.   And the other half the year, 26 weeks from now until the end of November, we focus on the teachings of Jesus, on his time of ministry, on his parables, works and te...
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Day of Pentecost

  I Corinthians 12:3b-13 Today is the great festival of Pentecost in the church, one of the Holiest days of the church year.   The day we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit.   It is the birthday of the church, the festival of the Holy Spirit.   But it is also a little weird and scary.   Quite frankly Pentecost can be a little intimidating.   I mean just look at the story, rushing wind, tongues of fire, people suddenly and impulsively speaking in foreign languages, generally making a public spectacle of themselves.   This holiday can be a little hard to get behind.   Anyone can handle Christmas and Easter.   They deal with discrete historical events, events that perhaps most importantly happened to someone else.   We easily try to can sit by and stand as silent witnesses to the events of Jesus’s birth, life and death, but not Pentecost.   In a world full of spectator events, Pentecost is a full contact sport.   No one kn...
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