This is an excerpt of the sermon I preached on John 19:31-37 this past Sunday, April 6, 2014. It is a complex topic and I commend to you the sermon in its entirety. – – – – – – I attended a discussion this past week with Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver. He has written…
Matthew 27: 33-54 [This post is excerpted from a sermon. The full sermon text is available here.] We began Lent with the story of Jesus in the wilderness. He is fresh off the spiritual high of his baptism where the voice proclaimed from the clouds, “This is my son, whom I love. With him I…
Mark 14:53-65; 15:1 [This reflection is excerpted from a sermon. The full sermon text is posted here.] In his massive two-volume work, The Death of the Messiah, Raymond Brown gives an overview of the scholarship on the Passion Narratives in the Gospels. It quickly becomes clear that there is a wide range of opinion…
[This column is from 2014 (back when I was a Young Clergy Woman instead of a Young Clergy Woman Alumna) and was originally posted on the Rev. Gal Blog Pals site.] A week ago, many of us participated in a holy ritual–Ash Wednesday. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Drawing the…
In preparing for Ash Wednesday and this weekend’s Lenten retreat I haven’t found a lot of time to blog. Thought I would share the offertory prayer we will be using for Lent this year. God of the Cross, in losing our lives we find them in you. In sharing our money and time, we receive…
*Below is the last part of my Easter sermon from this past Sunday (Luke 24:1-12). You can find the entire sermon here. I know that Easter sermons usually focus on the women–their faithfulness, their witness. Or maybe on the men and their disbelief. Or, if we preachers just want to go for the obvious, we…
The church I serve is pretty non-traditional, but we do have some traditions. One of them is that the children are invited to color the bulletins every Easter. We have a potluck breakfast before worship, and when the kids finish eating they can gather around a table with a stack of bulletins and assorted crayons,…
About a month ago, on a Sunday night, my mom took my dad to the emergency room because he had a fever that wouldn’t go away. After discovering his blood pressure was extremely low, they admitted him to the hospital. Then they sent him to another hospital. By the time I got there three days…
I’ve decided to cancel Lent next year. I’m pretty sure, as a (still) ordained part-time Mennonite pastor, I have that kind of power. I mean, I have a card in my wallet signed by the conference minister. So be looking for the headlines: No Lent Next Year. Last year a dear church member and friend…
With Matthew 28:1-10 The earth is shaking. Are angels descending? The tomb is before us. Is the stone rolling back? It’s bright as lightning, blinding as the sun reflecting off of snow. Of course we are afraid. But we need not tremble. We need not become like the dead. Because the tomb is empty and…
Spacious Faith 