Intersections

  A little background on this week’s reading: The apostles, starting in verse 12 of this chapter, are teaching and doing “signs and wonders” in the temple. Peter is getting to be known, almost as a celebrity for teaching and preaching on the Gospel, so the religious authorities have them put in jail. The priests want to question the apostles about what they are doing, and find that they have escaped (via an angel of the Lord) to continue preaching and teaching about the Good News. They are “non-violently” re-arrested, and they are currently standing trial as our scripture begins.  Our story this morning is part of a bigger story, which goes clear through verse 42, which I’ll let you read at your own time, because this is the part I’d like to focus on today. We have a quick back-and-forth with the priests and the apostles because they each kind of have their own agendas. Imagine being one of these apostles. They were given the task of preaching the Gospel, but now they end up i...

Hallelujah! I didn’t hear you - hallelujah! I just needed to get a few more in there this morning, it’s a great morning!  It’s been pretty quiet around since Friday night - and all day Saturday, but here we are… Jesus is risen! Hallelujah! Thank you all for being here on what seems to be the second-most popular day of the year, since the marketing machines haven’t found a way to monetize this holiday - yet.  Anyway - We have our familiar story… Luke is a classic text that I’m sure most of you are familiar with, and if not, then… I hope you enjoy this sermon I’ve prepared for you today, and hopefully it may inspire you to want to come back next week.  So we start out early in the morning, when it may have still been dark or light was just breaking over the horizon, kind of makes you think of the story of creation. Although Jesus was dead, God still commanded the sun to rise. God raised Adam and Eve out of the dirt, and raised them up in their image, as it say...

  Do any of us really know what God has done for us? We know that in our scripture tonight, Jesus is doing two things for us. He washes feet, and has commanded us to be loving to “one another”. We’ll explore each of these separately, but let’s jump into the first half, about the footwashing.  The narrator gives us what's happening in the most mixed up way in verse one. Before the festival of the passover... which should be an extremely happy event - if you remember, this is the celebration of the Israelites being released from Egyptian captivity, and escaped through the miracles of Moses. They were liberated out of bondage, and so the passover is celebrated, maybe even like our Independence Day! But in finishing that sentence, Jesus KNEW that his hour had come to depart from this world. This introduction almost seems like Charles Dickens had lifted it for his opening line of A Tale of Two Cities - it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times... everyone around...

  I know we just went through a bunch of scripture for you this morning. I know it could have been saved for later this week, as the events were unfolding, but I know that sometimes we just need to hear the whole story. It's important, because this is central to our faith. We need to know what happens before next Sunday and the resurrection.   Today, we started with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. We hear this story every year, and I'm hoping I can put some fresh eyes into it.  This year, we listened to the Gospel of Luke - and there are some important differences in this one than the others. First, he doesn't actually talk about palm branches, not on the road, not in people's hands waving... a little strange for what we are used to. There are no Hosannas shouted from the crowd. The King, much like the one who was celebrated a few months ago at Christmas, is still that same Emmanuel - "God with us" - and a symbol of peace on Earth.  God needs ...

My neighbor Larry was not a good gift giver. Every time he gave his wife a gift for Christmas, her birthday, or their anniversary, she complained about what a sucky gift it was. She was starting to get angry. "Larry, the next time you give me a bad gift, I will light it on fire!" A week later was Larry's wife's birthday. She came down to see only one small box. She sighed and went to go get a lighter. She opened up the present. It was a candle. What is the best gift you've ever given or received?  Hard to believe Lent is coming to an end, right? We are in the fifth week of Lent, and next week is Palm Sunday! I mean - I know many of us are focused on Easter in two weeks, but the journey really is getting tough right now for Jesus.  In the scripture this morning, we are six days before Passover, where everyone would be gathering for the celebration. But in our context, this is just letting us know that it's getting closer to Jesus' crucifixion....

  April is here, and I am ready for it! I don’t care how many showers there will be, I’m just ready for those May flowers. We are witnesses to the changing of the seasons, and how faithful God is in bringing those to us. It may not happen on our schedule, or even when the calendar tells us it’s going to happen, but regardless, our world will SPRING FORTH and bear all the life that it is given for the lively warm months ahead.  Our sermon series this month beginning after Easter will be called “We Are Witnesses”, and it’s a reminder that we witness all the glory that God provides us in our lives, whether we actually see it or not. Our scripture will come from the book of Acts, starting in chapter five. We skip through the book, according to the lectionary, and end on the last Sunday of May in chapter sixteen. The Book of Acts is an extension of the Gospel of Luke, who we have been studying this Lenten season, and is an important book for the fact that it details where the churc...