Posts from March 2013 (Page 2)

Susan Hylen from Emory University writes about our scripture for Sunday:  “The story of Mary’s anointing stands in contrast to the idea of many Christians today that what matters most is belief in Jesus — and by belief we mean conscious, doctrinal understanding of Jesus. Mary’s faithful action is different. John does not tell us what she believes, and it seems beyond human comprehension that she could understand all that will happen to Jesus, and all that her actions evoke.…

Our worship this week will be rooted in John’s Gospel account of Mary’s discipleship.  You may read John 12.1-8 here. From The New Interpreter’s Bible commentary (vol. 9, page 703):  “In the Gospel accounts of Mark and Matthew scholars focus on Jesus’ act of washing the feet of the disciples at the last supper and they link this with Jesus’ burial.  “In the foot washing Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet as an expression of his love for them, as a…

“…this piece of the Gospel has not always gone down well with the church.  We have argued about it for two thousand years and I expect we will continue to argue about it for two thousand more.  We are so afraid of letting people off the hook. We are so resentful of unearned love.  Unless we happen to be the ones toward whom the father is running, with his arms wide open and tears wetting his beard.” ~from Barbara Brown Taylor…

The word “prodigal” does not mean “wayward,” as many believe (based on our tendency to join the brothers in making judgments). It means wastefully or recklessly extravagant, extraordinarily generous, giving “prodigiously.” The term was meant to refer to the younger son’s lavish living—but it’s really the father who’s prodigal, isn’t it? The father extends generous grace and love to both sons when neither of them “deserve” it. from Steve Garness-Holmes

The word sin is somehow too grand a word to apply to the reaction of the prodigal’s elder brother when the sound of the hoedown reaches him out in the pasture among the cow flops, and yet in another way it is just the right word because nowhere is the deadliness of all seven of the deadly sins deadlier or more ludicrous than it is in him. Envy and pride and anger and covetousness, they are all there. Even sloth…

The Prodigal Son goes off with his inheritance and blows the whole pile on liquor and sex and fancy clothes until finally he doesn’t have two cents left to rub together and has to go to work or starve to death. He gets a job on a pig farm and keeps at it long enough to observe that the pigs are getting a better deal than he is and then decides to go home. There is nothing edifying about his…

“The parables that are Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ murmuring still have the power to expose the roots of bitterness that dig their way into us whenever we feel that God is too good to others and not good enough to us.  Typically, we want mercy for ourselves and justice for others, but the Lukan parables call for us to celebrate with God because God has been merciful not only to us but to others also, even to those we…

  [youtube=http://youtu.be/YYshjlT0VEM] Jesus are you real? All I do is doubt you, God All I do is love you, God All I do is question you What else can I do? This world was never solid ground The past is coming back around All I do is search for you What else can I do? And when I say I search for you I mean I search for peace I search for hope, I search for love And one day…