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.

MAUNDY THURSDAY | John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Tonight, we will hear a long, painful story about the Passion of Jesus. But we aren’t hear to simply know that Jesus loves us. We’re here to go, and act, and change the world for his sake.

Matthew 25:1-13

The hope and joy of the kingdom of God is like brisket: it’s never fast enough, never on our timetable, and always a little delayed. The Church and ministry are like that, too. None of it is like an Easy Bake Oven or an instapot; it takes time.

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.

Luke 2:1-20

Christ is brave enough, strong enough, powerful enough to stand the smell of this world, the ugly reality we know, the darkness all around us, and invite it into his eternal light.

Luke 1:26-38

Joy makes us live in new ways, with new habits, and new families, and new responsibilities, because we are called to herald the complicated, yet saving birth of Jesus Christ. We are called to herald new life—each and every time—by choosing joy.

Luke 1:5-25

The pattern of joy is not to burst out with as many words as we can, or to start telling the world about how good things are, or to launch into a flurry of do-goodery. The pattern of joy—this choice of joy—begins with quiet contemplation.

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.

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?

LUKE 16:1-13

[Today's] parable stands out from the others, because it shows us that money can also be used to sculpt new relationships, mend the breaches of our community, and give unexpected freedom to those who are burdened.

DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20

In the exodus from Egypt, in wandering in the wilderness, in observing the sabbath, in building the homes of God, and in prophesying against injustice, we see that choosing life places us on a path that is anything but straightforward; and we see that choosing life requires choosing it again and again.

Deuteronomy 24:17-18 and Jeremiah 2:4-13

The Hebrew people are commanded to communally remember the traumas of their ancestors, not for the sake of white-knuckled self-determination, but for the sake of their communal wholeness.

Galatians 6:1-16

Paul writes to the church of Galatia about the obsession to be right and its close bedfellow: the obsession to gain power over others. But Christ’s crucifixion gives us a very different set of rules and affections, ones which will surely lead us to plant seeds for tomorrow.

Luke 9:51-62

Let the dead bury the dead, and let’s start making room for the living. Everything depends on plowing a furrow ahead, getting ready for the Spirit’s seeds of hope, and anticipating a harvest that our children and grandchildren will reap.

ASCENSION OF THE LORD ∙ Acts 1:1-11

These disciples are rubbernecked to heaven — to a spiritual event of the past, and a ministry of the past, and their ways of the past. In trying to figure it out, they forgot about Jesus’ words: “To Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

The church has never, ever, ever been called to tune out. It has been called to be tuned-in, with a heart and set of eyeglasses that give it a different lens: a bifocal faith.