Blog (Page 42)

Who Do you say..I am? verse 2 by AGAPE (David Scherer) Person A thinks the savior is love It’s Jesus who frees us so grace is enough When she isn’t right.  She lives her life as if it’s like She’s really been forgiven by the living Christ Person B can’t seem to find the love path. Reads about the blood bath thinks the Maker loves wrath.     She doesn’t see the cheek get turned When she sees all the kids on…

When we consider who Jesus is, what sort of king do we desire?  Do we yearn for a king who is the king of outcasts, the poor and the oppressed?  Do you want to follow a king who has as his mandate to bring down the powerful and raise up the oppressed.  It is one thing to “say it” is another to understand the transformation this would require for our own lives and the life of our community.   This…

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them  with her hair.  Jesus said, “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” John 12. 3,7 Welcome her gift,      the deep desire            that in this time you do what is in you to do. Let her touch you      so closely,           arouse you…

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard,          anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.          The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.                    – John 12.3 Despite all desire and its loveliness,          — a giving away. In the sight of those who criticize,          —a pouring out. Amidst the stench of death and violence,          —the aroma of life. Among those who do not understand,          —tenderness. Though there are those who divide and separate,          —a…

“Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price,and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.”  (John  12.3) What Mary performs here is the gesture of absolute extravagant giving. It is the deed of contemplation. Nothing has prepared this act. But still, the ointment is there. It is present in the house of the contemplative, who has renounced everything for…

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…