Worship for Sunday, September 1, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus protests against human customs being given the weight of divine law while the essence of God’s law is ignored. True uncleanness comes not from external things but from the intentions of the human heart. Last week Jesus told us, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). We who were washed in the word when we were born in the font return to it every Sunday to ask God to create in us clean hearts.
Worship for Sunday, August 18, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Wisdom prepares a feast, sets her table, and invites all to come and eat her bread and drink her wine. The first chapter of John’s gospel owes much to the biblical tradition that imagined Wisdom as existing before anything was created and having a role in the work of creation. Christ, the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), today invites us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. John’s gospel includes no account of the institution of the Lord’s supper, but here we can’t help hearing Jesus’ words as an invitation to the meal of bread and wine we share.
Worship for August 25, 2024: Time after Pentecost
In today’s gospel many people take offense at Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood; even many of Jesus’ disciples peel off. This is the backdrop in John’s gospel for Peter’s confession of faith. “To whom can we go?” asks Peter, in words we sometime sing just before the gospel is read. “You have the words of eternal life.”
Worship for Sunday, August 11, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus says that the bread of life he gives for the life of the world is his flesh, and whoever eats this bread has eternal life now and will be raised on the last day. We live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. The whole purpose of life is giving yourself for the other.
Worship for Sunday, August 4, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Apparently not satisfied by Jesus’ feeding of thousands, some who were there press him for a sign of power; perhaps it is daily manna they want. As always in John’s gospel when people want a sign, Jesus offers himself. He is the bread come from heaven to give life to the world. He calls us to come to him and believe in him, and through that relationship to know the one who sent him.
Worship for July 21, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Mark’s gospel makes clear how great is the press of the crowd, with its countless needs to be met, on Jesus and his disciples. Yet in today’s gospel Jesus advises his disciples to get away and rest, to take care of themselves. Sometimes we think that when others are in great need we shouldn’t think of ourselves at all; but Jesus honors the caregivers’ need. We are sent from Christ’s table to care for others and for ourselves.
Worship for July 28, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Today is the first of five Sundays with gospel readings from John 6, the first four of which focus on Jesus as the bread of life. Today Jesus feeds thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. What we have, what we bring to Jesus’ table, seems like it will not be enough to meet all the needs we see around us. But it is not the adequacy of our supplies or our skills that finally makes the difference: it is the power of Jesus working in the littlest and least to transform this world into the world God desires, a world where all the hungry are satisfied.
Worship for Sunday, July 14, 2024: Time after Pentecost
John the Baptist speaks truth to power, and Herod had him killed. In Herod’s fear that Jesus is John returned from the dead, we may hear hope for the oppressed: all the prophets killed through the ages are alive in Jesus. We are called to witness to justice in company with them and to proclaim God’s saving love.
Worship for Sunday, July 7, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus does great deeds of power and gives his disciples authority over demons. Yet none of this power is unilateral; it all must be received by faith. Jesus asks his disciples to go out without money or supplies so that they will be dependent on how others receive them. When we are sent from the assembly to witness and to heal, we are asked to be vulnerable, to be dependent on the reception of others. The Spirit always operates in the “between”: between Jesus and his Abba, between Jesus and us, between you and me, between us and those to whom we are sent.
Worship for Sunday, June 30, 2024: Time after Pentecost
A woman finds healing by touching Jesus’ cloak, and a girl is restored to life when he takes her by the hand. In both cases a boundary is crossed: in Jesus’ time the hemorrhaging woman was considered unclean, polluting others by her touch, and anyone who touched a corpse also became unclean. In Mark’s gospel Jesus breaks down barriers, from his first meal at a tax collector’s house to his last breath on the cross as the temple curtain is torn in two. We dare to touch Jesus in our “uncleanness” and to live as a community that defines no one as an outsider.
