“Didn’t we play stickball with him?” “Didn’t he once pull the tail of a donkey an make it bray so loudly at 3am that all the neighbors woke up?” “Didn’t he used to catch frogs down by the river and scare the girls with them?”
“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
They’ve seen this movie before, and so some of them are thinking, “Great! Jesus is here, he’ll calm the storm and all will be well.”
But Jesus doesn’t calm the storm.
He’s just standing there, telling them not to be afraid, in the midst of all this raging chaos.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that it seeks to benefit from faith without putting any work into it. It looks for safety, it looks for rescue and the salvation from eternal damnation, rather than a relationship with God. It is purely practical.
Lectionary Readings – 7th Sunday after Pentecost Since I grew up in northern Alaska, I have never spent much time farming, nor have I seen much in the way of wheat when it’s young. But from what I’ve been told is that when wheat is young, it looks very much like grass. More to the…
Daily Office Readings – Old Testament ( Joshua 2:1-14 ) Today the Old Testament passage was about the two spies that Joshua sent into Jericho and their interaction with the prostitute Rahab. I’ve read this story multiple times, and for whatever reason, today what jumped out at me was not the fact that Rahab was…
Some old men came to see Abba Poemen, and said to him: Tell us, when we see brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will stay awake? The old man said to them: Actually, if I saw a brother sleeping, I would put his head on my knees and let…
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Daily Office Readings – Gospel ( Luke 13:10-17 ) These past few weeks have seen a lot of protests concerning the persistent racism in this country. Those protesting have pointed out that the amount of racism hasn’t changed, but what has changed is that technology has helped to bring it to the light. One of…
Daily Office Readings – Gospel ( Matthew 5:27-37 ) As soon as I started reading this Gospel this morning, my mind went back too several youth leaders and pastors I’ve known, and I started hearing the voices of these leaders telling the old familiar comments (some jokes) that come with this passage. The comments always…
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Exodus 20:7 – KJV The other day I was reading again in Paul Tillich’s collection of sermons entitled “The Eternal Now” and ran across a sermon titled, “The Divine Name.” Tillich used…