Matthew 6: 1-6 16-21

Sisters & brothers, grace to you & peace from the God of all mercy, the Christ of consolation and cleansing, and the Spirit who renews our hearts. Amen.

This morning as I sat down to prepare this Ash Wednesday’s message, my doorbell rang. It was Stephanie, our un-official “neighborhood watch” lady from one block over.  Stephanie walks her dog a number of times daily around the blocks of our neighborhood, but believe me it’s not just dog-walking she’s doing when she’s out and about. Hers are the eyes and ears of the neighborhood, and also the mouthpiece. She was stopping by to let us know that there had been a break-in just down the street from us, on our block, yesterday afternoon around 3:00. Thieves had broken in to our neighbor’s home while no one was there, and stolen some valuables. Next-door neighbors who were at home at the time had no idea.

(more…)

Mark 9: 2-9

Sisters & brothers, grace to you & peace from the God of pulsing radiance, from Christ the blazing light, and from the Spirit of transcendence and imminence.  Amen.

Think of how many times you have prayed the Lord’s Prayer over the years, and how many times the words “thy kingdom come” have rolled off your tongue, over your lips, and out into your close, personal airspace.

If you’re like me, you might have occasionally imagined what that kingdom might look like:  “peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled,” a lion laying down with the lamb, somewhere over the rainbow, a glorious and everlasting kingdom in the clouds awaiting us.  But truth be told, too often we find it hard to imagine a new world coming to transform our ordinary, mostly mundane existence.

(more…)

Mark 1: 40-45

Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the God of all, from the Christ of compassion, and from the Spirit of comfort. Amen.

One of the singularly-most-popular words these days in the vocabulary of modern psychology is the word “boundaries.”

Everyone, it seems, is aware of observing appropriate boundaries.

Workshops are offered in the workplace to assist people to understand and respect the need for professional boundaries.

(more…)

Mark 1: 29-39

Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Creator, Christ our Redeemer, and the Spirit our Comforter.  Amen.

We don’t even know her name.

St. Mark only refers to her as “Simon’s mother-in-law.”

Because, like everything else in his gospel narrative, Mark hurries through the details to get to the main point.  The first words of this morning’s Gospel are toned down a little in the translation.  “As soon as” maybe sounds less frenetic than “immediately” but “immediately” is what Mark means to say.  And remember: we’re still only in chapter 1 of Mark’s Gospel which skips Jesus’ birth altogether and goes “immediately” to his baptism, and then “immediately” to his temptation in the wilderness, and then “immediately” to the calling of the same 4 gentlemen who are named in today’s gospel, fishermen called to follow Jesus, and then “immediately” from their boatworks and their networks they go with Jesus to Capernaum where in the synagogue he teaches as one with authority, rebuking and finally exorcising a demon.

(more…)

Mark 1: 21-28

Sisters and brothers, grace, light, & peace be yours from God our creator, Christ our redeemer, and the Spirit our sustainer. Amen.

It was a moment of demonic epiphany.

And the Gospel of Mark wastes no time getting there. It’s the prime characteristic of St. Mark’s entire gospel narrative, after all. Mark, you see, is all about epiphanies: about Jesus’ being revealed/manifest to his world. Mark’s is almost a breathless account of the life of our Lord. With no story of the birth in the opening verses of the Gospel, Mark starts instead with Jesus’ baptism, and then immediately into his temptation, and then after that the calling of Simon, Andrew, James & John to drop everything and becomes fishers of people, and then: just half-way into the first chapter: this.

(more…)