Reflections for Lent

This year in our cycle of Lenten readings we hear often about beginnings. We heard first about the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. We heard of the beginning of human existence in a world as we know it, with its separation from God. We hear this week about another of the beginnings central to the story […]

We have started our Lenten journey through the desert towards death, and resurrection. Today we listen to one of the best known stories in the bible (Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7). We hear about Adam and Eve, how they fell from grace, out of the intimate presence of God, to a state of shame and separation from

I doubt many of us are tempted to stand on the street corner tooting a trumpet and calling attention to our piety. So the warnings that Jesus gives in our Gospel reading today, for the beginning of Lent (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18), they don’t really apply to us, do they.  In terms of correcting our behavior

As we move into Holy Week we celebrate the slightly schizophrenic Feast of Palm or Passion Sunday. The palms and celebration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is short lived (Luke 19:28-40), quickly followed by a long reading of his passion and death (Luke 22:14-23:56).  Head snapping though this may be, and probably was for

Another week, another altercation between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees (John 8:1-11). But this one is a little different. In some cases Jesus takes the fight to them, as in: “you brood of vipers” (Mt 12:34). In others he engages with a friendly questioner: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mk

During Lent we are presented in our Readings with many of the most familiar scripture stories. Maybe it’s a way to focus us back on the clearest summations of what our faith is all about. Today we hear the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32), which is certainly up there as one of

We really, really want to believe that bad things happen to bad people and not to good people. We know this isn’t true, the evidence is all around us. Bad things happen to good people, and good things also happen to bad people. There is simply no connection.  The people of Jesus’s time were equally

The Transfiguration is a strange event. That’s obvious at the superficial level, but it remains strange when we dig a bit further. Jesus takes just a select three of his disciples and they have an experience which is literally out of this world. It’s much more dramatic than the Resurrection, where there were no out

We know that Jesus was “fully human” – in other words he was just like us. When we hear a story like Luke’s account of Jesus being tempted in the desert (Luke 4:1-13) does it help us to feel more like him, or not? I suspect for many of us the answer is “not so

What kind of a relationship do we have with Jesus? Or, perhaps a better question, what kind of relationship does he have with us? During the Easter season we’ve followed the gradual unveiling of the answer to this question. At first it was as companion and teacher (on the road to Emmaus), then as protector