Following the Baptism of the Lord we’ve had two Sundays where we heard how John and Luke introduced the public ministry of Jesus. Today we suddenly jump back to a story of Jesus’ childhood (Luke 2:22-40). This certainly isn’t the straightforward order that Luke promised at the beginning of his Gospel, and indeed it doesn’t […]
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I do find myself feeling a certain amount of sympathy for Pilate in the exchange he has with Jesus in today’s gospel (Jn 18:33b-37). He’s been handed this hot potato by the Jewish leaders, who he trusts about as far as he could throw them. He doesn’t care whether Jesus thinks he’s a king or
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“This is my body, this is my blood”. We are used to thinking about this extraordinary statement from the perspective of a meal. That was the context in which Jesus spoke these words. John in his gospel elaborates the idea of eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus in a way that we
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The Feast of the Holy Trinity is, in a way, a recapitulation of our Easter journey. It summarizes what the last six weeks have told us about God and what he expects of us. This is a God of relationships. His whole nature is to be in relationship. That’s why our understanding of God can
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Through the weeks of Eastertide we have followed the growing understanding of what it meant for Jesus to remain with us after his resurrection. Starting from the confusion immediately following the empty tomb; to the recognition by the women who were closest to Jesus, and the rest of the disciples, that he was still present;
We arrive at Palm Sunday, and I confess I’ve never been entirely sure whether this is part of Lent, the end of Lent, or whatever. The beginning at Ash Wednesday is very clear and simple, the end not so much. Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere! The full title of this feast is “Palm
Today we finish our Church year with the Feast of Christ the King. It feels somehow appropriate that we should complete our annual cycle with a recognition of the power and majesty of our Savior, even as we may be already looking forward to the next season, which returns to the simplicity and powerlessness reflected
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Hail Mary, Blessed Virgin, Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, … We have many, many titles for Mary. One list I found has 50! That might be more than we need and today we are focused on one – Mary, Mother of God. On this Sunday after Christmas we would usually be celebrating the Feast
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No one votes for a king. That’s kind of the point. If anyone gets to choose a king it’s God. Medieval European monarchs created a whole theology of their “divine right” to rule. The emperors of China similarly claimed the “mandate of heaven”. In the Jewish (and Christian) tradition David was chosen by God to
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The disciples were getting worried. They were in a remote place, there were a lot more people come to see Jesus than they expected, and they were wondering how on earth they were all going to get something to eat. So what do they do? They pass the problem back to Jesus with the obvious
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