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The Good Shepherd- John 10

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Ezekiel 34: 7-15; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2: 19-25; John 10: 1-10 The readings today center around the image of shepherds. The image of the shepherd is a beloved way for Christians to think about Jesus. My family wasn’t particularly religious when I was growing up, but I remember having a picture of Jesus holding a lamb on a wall in our house. I’m sure that was a pretty common image in many homes. So, when we look at a reading like Psalm 23 and read “The Lord is my shepherd” we rightly feel comforted by the reality that God is looking out for us like a shepherd would look out for the sheep. That pastoral image is good and beautiful, but there is actually a lot of depth to the image of the shepherd, and we can miss the depth of what Jesus is saying if we don’t see how the image of shepherds and sheep are used in the Bible. What might be surprising is that the image of a shepherd is often used in a negative way. We heard that in our Old Testament reading today, where the image of the Shep...
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John 20- Doubting Thomas

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John 20: 19-31 Thomas has gotten a bad reputation. A “doubting Thomas” has become a phrase used to mean that someone is overly skeptical. “Oh, don’t be such a doubting Thomas”, we might say. People will know what a “doubting Thomas” is without ever having picked up a bible or stepping into a church. I think that’s unfortunate because Thomas really wasn’t that much more of a doubter than any of the other disciples. When Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds the body of Jesus missing, she doesn’t think ‘resurrection’. She thinks ‘grave robber’. It’s not until he’s standing right in front of her and speaking her name that she recognizes him. Mary goes and tells the other disciples that she has seen Jesus, but they were still full of fear and hiding behind locked doors. They saw the empty tomb, but maybe it was a trap. Maybe Mary had been seeing things in her grief. I’m not sure they really believed until Jesus came to them. But Thomas wasn’t at that gathering....
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Easter Sunday- Align yourself with Jesus

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Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20: 1-18 There are some really fascinating details that are included in the stories about the resurrection. Mary is deep in grief over the death of Jesus. She goes to the tomb but then she finds his body is missing, which is salt in the wound after watching him be tortured, humiliated, and killed in such an awful way. But then Jesus is standing right in front of her and she doesn’t recognize him. … Many have tried to explain this by saying that she was crying so hard that the tears were blurring her vision, or that Jesus was behind some bushes. … But we see this happening in other places too. Two disciples are walking to Emmaus, and Jesus joins them on the road and has a significant conversation with them about the Scriptures, and they don’t recognize him either. Eventually, he is sitting with them and they see that it’s him when he blessed the bread, but then he vanishes. … Again, people struggle to explain this. When this ...
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Good Friday- The Lamb of God

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  John 18:1-19:42 “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).  These are the words of John the Baptist at the beginning of the Gospel according to John. … What might have come to mind for people when John used the phrase “Lamb of God”? The tradition of Morning and Evening Prayer is based on the ancient rhythm of the Temple sacrifices. As a part of morning and evening offerings, a lamb was offered along with grain (or bread), oil, and wine. In the thinking of ancient people, they are creating a ritual meal of hospitality for God. It was a ritual of welcome. It was about maintaining the covenant relationship between God and Israel through daily worship. It was the heartbeat of the Temple. Leviticus 17:11 tells us that “the life is in the blood”. As a part of a sacrifice, blood was used to purify. Sprinkling blood was like sprinkling life. The blood of the lamb would be poured against the side of the altar to keep it in a state of purity. This i...
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Palm/Passion Sunday

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Matthew 21: 1-11; Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29; Isaiah 50: 4-9; Psalm 31: 9-16;  Philippians 2: 5-11; Matthew 26: 14-27: 66 Today can feel like a bit of a trick. We come in, and it feels like a celebration. Jesus is arriving in Jerusalem. We are waving Palm branches. Jesus is being welcomed as the Messiah. … Suddenly, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, rejected by the crowds, and killed on a cross. … We came for a party, but suddenly it’s a funeral. There was a time when Palm Sunday had its own Sunday. But then the Passion was added to it because people weren’t showing up for Holy week services. That means they would come for the celebration of Palm Sunday, then they would come the next Sunday for Easter Sunday, without liturgically recognizing the betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and burial that happened in-between those two Sundays. We have an understandable aversion to the sad and difficult, but this is a part of life. We have birthday parties, but we also have funerals. And there is somethi...
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Lent 5- Lazarus

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  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45 Our readings point us to the reality of death and God’s power to overcome it. In a vision, Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones that represent Israel, and God gives back life to what is completely and undeniably long dead. Psalm 130 is a sinner’s cry from the depths, hoping for God’s mercy and redeeming love- It is a kind of spiritual death. And our reading from Romans teaches that the way of fallen flesh is the way of death, but life in the Spirit frees us from the death-bound mindset of the flesh. … So, our readings lead us to consider death. The hopelessness of a destroyed community that seems doomed to the dust, more a part of the past than the future. And we are invited to consider the deep pit of our own sin and our inability to get out of it on our own. And this brings us to our Gospel reading. Here, the finality of death is felt by Mary and Martha, who are grieving the death of their brother Lazarus. His body is...
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John 9- Blindness and Sight

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1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41 Most of our readings today are related to sight. In our reading from the first book of Samuel, the prophet is looking for a new king to anoint over the people of Israel. He is directed to the sons of Jesse, and he initially considers the oldest Son, who seems like the obvious choice. But Samuel hears God say to him,  “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).  The son who gets selected is the youngest, David, who they didn’t even think to bring with them. … How people see things, is not how God sees things. In the letter to the Ephesians, we read about darkness and light, and being asleep or being awake. Again, we have this theme of sight, of vision. Obviously, we see best in the light, and it is hard to see in the darkness. We have an ancient ...
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