Palm Sunday and Good Friday mark the points in the year where, we, as a church with a liturgical calendar (in this context, means the readings are preset), read the most amount of the Gospel. If you haven’t read one of the Gospels cover to cover (so we say), go ahead and do so. The shortest Gospel is Mark, so if you are trying to just get one done, start there. Anyway, you notice when we manage to read a large chunk of Gospel lectionary, we have a lot with which to deal. Over the millennia, people much more intelligent than I have spent a lot thought around this narrative, trying to make sense of Jesus’ death and then resurrection, in other words salvation and/or atonement. Most likely I have nothing new under the sun to pass onto you. (But then since we are the recipients of a holy tradition…

“Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” This is part of the Collect for today that we will pray again in a few minutes. The collect for each Sunday was written with the lectionary readings in mind. Sometimes the readings have since changed and the collect seems to have nothing to do with readings. Such is truly not the case this Sunday. Please take note that there is nothing inherently onerous about commands from God. This prayer expresses the hopes that our thoughts and desires might not just react or respond to God’s thoughts and desires but ALIGN with God’s thoughts and desires so that we find joy, or maybe that might be better worded, that slow down enough…

I like to plan things. I like to know what to expect if I can, and how to manage. If I’m not in charge of planning, I like knowing someone else is planning. If you know anything about me, this should come as no surprise at all. Now, I freely admit that planning only goes so far. All we need to do is look at this past year of the pandemic. I really appreciate a meme I saw this past year that said the most useless thing I ever bought was a 2020 planning calendar. I’m probably not alone, even those people who like to fly by the seat of their pants through life, even those people like some structure. And all of us have had a hard year planning. I think at least part of this comes from the territory that we are in a post-modern period. There is…

We are at the third week in Lent, and for some people this may feel like a slog, but for others perhaps they have come up with a way in which they are moving closer to God in this Lenten season. Almost half-way through Lent, they may be hitting their stride. In either case, our readings from the lectionary today may seem a little daunting. There are rules or so it seems, given in the Old Testament reading from Exodus. In the Gospel, Jesus gets mad, and in the epistle, Paul seems to talk in circles, again. Yes, the lectionary seems a bit daunting for Lent 3 this year. As Christians, we could learn a lot from our Jewish brethren about the theology of the Ten Commandments. The Jewish faith envisions and refers to the commandments more as the ten best ways, or you could think of them as best…