Matthew 14:22-33

Sometimes, even though we try really, really hard to trust in God, and live like Jesus wants us to live, we just can’t seem to do it. But even when we can’t get it right, Jesus shows up to help us out.

1 Kings 19:9-18

This is a story about self-revelation: about revealing ourselves to God, and letting God reveal God’s own self to us. It’s about intimacy in a troubled, heartache of a marriage between God and humanity.

Matthew 14:13-21

Do you ever wonder if Jesus gets bothered by us?

Isaiah 55:1-5

The road from Babylon back to Jerusalem can be excruciating. And after its crucible, it doesn’t always feel tidy, or good, or joyful at first. Sometimes we return to rubble, and wonder if it was worth it.

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Even though God’s plan is a tiny little seed, and even though we can’t always see it growing in the ground, that doesn’t mean it’s not growing!

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

In Jesus’ parable, the kingdom isn't being brought about by “real” work, like farming, or craftsmanship, or buying and selling. The kingdom of heaven is brought about by domestic work. The work of a housewife. “Woman’s work,” which becomes the locus of divine activity.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

In a world that’s all mixed up, where the weeds and good seeds are all commingled, it becomes impossible to live as a faithful disciple of Jesus and not ask hard questions about the world.

Matthew 9:35-10:8

What happens on Sunday morning isn’t the culmination of the Church’s calling. Instead, its heart beats through service, and action, and transformation — its heartbeat is the work of healing, restoring, resurrecting.

Genesis 12:1-12

But every way we read scripture—and every way we theologize about God—has a real-world consequence. Every choice has its consequences. We have another choice in how we listen to scripture — one that doesn’t end in war, or violence, or dehumanization.

John 14:15-21

In the reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant, we commit to imaginations that are captive to love and not fear. We commit to the hard work or reorienting our imaginations around resurrections and not death, hope and not despair.

John 20:19-31

In revealing the broken bones and bloody toes we experience, we are drawn into a great circle of healing and being healed. There is this constant dialogue—constant dance—of us caring for one another and being cared for.

EASTER SUNDAY | Matthew 28:1-10

When the truth is proclaimed loudly and boldly, like we see at this empty tomb, it causes an earthquake. But it also brings Christ into closer proximity to our fear, and doubt, and pain, and brings us into closer proximity to his love, and grace, and freedom.

Matthew 14:13-22

The crowd is faced with a similar temptation as Jesus: should we leave this wilderness out of hunger...? But this time, Jesus doesn’t need them to martyr themselves. Jesus lets them be hungry, and meets them with compassion.

Matthew 5:1-13

There is no blessing for those who place order above wholeness, or the law above what is truly right. But there is a blessedness beyond reason to those who place wholeness and righteousness above human whims.

John 1:1-14

We will only be able to worship this tiny, fragile baby Jesus, when we dwell in his presence with those who are vulnerable.

Romans 13:8-14; 14:1-4, 7-10

We join the Church today in remembering our mortality and that we die in the same manner that we were born: held in love, shepherded by the Lord of all, and part of a communion of saints that is far bigger and more beautiful than we can ever grasp.

Luke 18:1-8

We come to realize that just as we petition God as that widow, so too does the Spirit petition us, asking our unjust hearts to joyfully acquiesce to hope.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Once we shake up the etch-a-sketch, and we accept the reality of our circumstances, that’s when we get to have fun. Try drawing a new image, in a new style, with a different story. You can use that image you drew to give inspiration to the next; our dreaming was practice for the new dreams ahead of us.

Matthew 25:31-46

One of the most unexpected divides in this story is between those who were trying to discern which people were “deserving” of grace and those who were extravagantly indiscriminate in their care for others.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Our lives are always making a confession of what is valuable to us. Will our lives make a good confession—that virtuous, loving, faithful, patient, gentle confession? Or will we miscalibrate our sense of what is valuable?