On March 13, the 1st Sunday of Lent, you will notice an addition to our sanctuary setting. Our seating will remain in its normal front-facing configuration. But in the center of the room, in the midst of our congregational seating, a simple table will be placed, representing the sacred space we are symbolically opening in [...]
As many of you have noticed, these past few weeks the Sunday congregation has been seated facing the east windows, in a semi circular arrangement. We moved into this configuration in mid February, to mark the season of Lent. Lent is a solemn season, in which our focus turns inward, and, often, the directness of [...]
Lent 4 John 9:1-41 Across the way from the soon-to-be-demolished Cole Hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, six foam-core crosses were erected on what came to be known as Snow Hill. Five crosses were inscribed with the names of the students killed during the Valentine’s Day shootings: Gayle, Catalina, Juliana, Ryanne [...]
3rd Sunday in Lent John 4:5-30, Exodus 17:1-7 Once upon a time, I lived not in a place called “striving” or “testing,” as did the Israelites in this story: but in a land named Absolute, in Certainty’s backyard: in a place where doubt was searched out carefully, like a weed, and ruthlessly uprooted. I remember [...]
If you want to make people think about danger, shudder in aversion, or get paralyzed in the very act of putting a foot forward, it doesn’t get much better than talking about snakes. Almost everybody I know hates them, or fears them. I know I always did. I grew up in west Texas and in [...]
Lent 3 | Mark 6:30-44 | Mark 8:14-21 | John 2:13-22 bottom line There are two stories stretched out here before us this morning like blankets on the grass– and between them, an infinite world of possibility and disappointment, the possibility of making a real difference in a big, hard world or the alternative that, [...]
Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10 and Mark 16:1-8 What is the opposite of faith? asks the writer Anne Lamott, as she slogs through yet another day in the life—fighting with her 13 year old son, trying to build a relationship with the boy’s father, struggling with memories of her mother so bitter and angry that she cannot [...]
First Sunday in Lent Scripture: Luke 4:1-13 and Deuteronomy 26:1-11 I was just finishing my work out at the gym early Thursday morning when I ran into a colleague from another congregation who paused in the middle of his sweating and panting to greet me. When I asked how his week was going he said, [...]
Sunday of the Transfiguration Scripture: Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36 On the day that my brother died, I was transfigured. Not, like Jesus was, into his truest spiritual self, luminous with light and radiant with power; but rather, into a person I do not, quite yet, recognize as myself. I had been taken to the [...]
Scripture: Luke 6:20-26 and Jeremiah 17:5-10 There was an older lady in the first congregation I served who was elegant, generous, and aloof. She was liberal in all senses of the word, but, despite regular encouragement from her pastors, rarely participated in the hands-on work of the church she supported with her dollars and her [...]
