Category: Art & Music

Welcome!

“Homeless Jesus” outside St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Bay Village, OH

“You did it to me” commentary on Mark 25:31-46

So many of us, in our devotional and ecclesiastical lives, long to “see Jesus.”  And rightly so.  We pray for an experience of Jesus’s presence.  We yearn to feel him close.  We sing hymns, recite creeds, hear sermons, and attend Bible studies — all in the hope of seeing and knowing Jesus in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with these practices — unless they keep us at comfortable arm’s length from where Jesus actually is.  Unless they lead us to believe that the work of justice and compassion is somehow secondary to the “real” business of Christianity.  The real business of Christianity is bending the knee to Jesus.  And where is Jesus?  Jesus is in the least and the lost and the broken and the wounded.  Jesus is in the un-pretty places.  In the bodies we don’t discuss in polite company.  In the faces we don’t smile at.  In the parts of town we speed by.

It’s not that we earn our way to majestic King Jesus by caring for the vulnerable.  It is that majestic King Jesus, by his own choice and volition, has stooped and surrendered in such a way that he IS the vulnerable.  There’s no other way to get to him.  Period.

Debbie Thomas Lectionary Essay “You Did It To Me” on Journey with Jesus webzine; posted November 15, 2020

Please make the time to read the entire essay by Debie Thomas as you consider the meaning of Christ the King this week.

View the Revised Common Lectionary readings appointed for Sunday, November 26, 2023 on the Revised Common Lectionary site curated by the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.

Be well. Do good. Pay attention. Keep learning.

Please come back to this site throughout the week in order to keep learning.

Image: CNN

Welcome!

Each Wednesday morning a group of us gather online to explore the readings to be used in worship the following Sunday. Our handout features readings, commentaries, and notes for the Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost (August 20, 2023) in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.

This past Wednesday, August 16, 2023, we explored the readings from Genesis 45:1-15 and Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 for the voice of the Spirit. Our handout included commentaries on the other appointed texts from the Psalms (Psalm 133 ) and the Gospel according to Matthew (Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28).

From the commentary on Genesis 45:1-15

Matt Skinner has a new book out on Acts, subtitled Catching Up with the Spirit. In it he makes a helpful remark regarding what he thinks is often an assumption at play, “that God’s ‘activity’ in the world is like a puppeteer pulling strings.” It’s different for him, it seems. “It’s easier for me,” he notes, “to look back on situations, after the fact, and wonder. With the help of hindsight, I might perceive ways in which I was open or closed to God’s presence.”

This is the power of Joseph’s final confession: that though none of what has happened to him over the course of his life is what he’d have chosen it to be, he can yet now see that God has set him up to preserve life.

“Joseph’s whole story” by Liz Goodman in The Christian Century, February 18, 2022. 

You are invited to view or download the handout we used to guide our discussion and tune our hearts to the Spirit.

View the Revised Common Lectionary readings appointed for Sunday, August 20, 2023 on the Revised Common Lectionary site curated by the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.

Be well. Do good. Pay attention. Keep learning.

View or download the Handout for Proper 15, Year A.

I Am Your Brother Joseph from the Ad Imaginem Dei blog curated by Margaret M. Duffy. This post explores the story of Joseph revealing his true identity to his brothers. See Genesis 45.

Please come back to this site throughout the week in order to keep learning.

Image: ChurchArt Pro