Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good. God’s steadfast love endures forever. . . . Save us—Hosanna in Hebrew—Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. (Psalm 118) This is the hymn that…
This week I saw a vision of bones. Well, more of an image than a vision. One might call it a photograph. There was a long table with colorful cloths folded and placed along both sides. On each folded cloth was a human skull. These were skulls of Native Americans. Bones that had been collected…
This call to worship is based on Psalm 78:12-20, which echoes the week’s lectionary reading from Exodus (17:1-7) Can God spread a table in the wilderness? In the sight of our ancestors, God worked marvels. Can God spread a table in the wilderness? In the land of Egypt God divided the sea and let them…
Based on Psalm 121 In the wilderness, we will lift up our eyes. In the wilderness, our help comes from God: Our God who made the wilderness; Our God who inhabits the wilderness. God is our keeper; God is our shade and shelter. Let us praise God together. You may also be interested in this…
Some were there when Jesus, bloody and bruised, climbed the hill to the Place of the Skull. The women, wailing along with the infants in their arms; Simon of Cyrene, forced to carry the cross beam that Jesus could no longer bear; the chief priests and scribes and elders re-writing the narrative in their heads,…
Call to Worship (from Isaiah 65 and John 20) In the light of this Easter morning God is doing something new! New heavens. New earth. New life. Weeping turns to joy. Sorrow to delight. Be glad and rejoice. The stone is rolled away. The grave clothes lie in a heap. Jesus, who was dead, is…
A few years ago I audited a class at St. Paul seminary on “Preaching and the Short Story.” There was a story on the syllabus with “Easter” in the title, and I kept thinking I should read that before I wrote my Easter sermon. So this story title, “Small Easter,” kept rattling around in…
God of the cross, tottering down the streets of Jerusalem on a donkey, You are not the savior we expect. Your power doesn’t look like the power we want our God to have. Your wisdom makes no sense to us. We are happy to join the crowd, waving branches, But not so sure we want…
I am re-posting these reflections on John 12:1-11 in honor of my father, David Harader, who died three years ago today. This piece is a distillation of the sermon I preached on the Sunday after Dad’s funeral–which was apparently the fifth Sunday of Lent. “Six days before Passover.” Probably a couple of months–though only one…
Jesus, Jesus. Did you hear? There were these people from Galilee, they were faithful, made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices at the temple. And then. And then. These men. Pilate’s men. They just killed them. Slaughtered them right there in the temple. The blood of the people mixed with the blood of…
Spacious Faith 