Intersections

  The blessing of home. We've been looking at home through different lenses the last four weeks, and Christmas is so close, I think most of us can even taste it now. What are your favorite flavors of the Christmas season? Mine are of pie - my grandma was a world-class baker. Every holiday - not just Christmas - there would always be four or five pies made, with the flavors rotating, depending on the time of year. Christmas would be apple, pecan (my grandpa's favorite), pumpkin, and mincemeat. As a kid, you hear mincemeat, and you kind of turn up your nose. I don't think I ever tried it while I had it available. It just... doesn't sound appealing. But your nose knows when there is a blessing of home.  The scripture today turns back the clock a little bit - we are reading now out of Luke, chapter 1. Our last couple of weeks we've been focusing on John the Baptist, and this week is no exception, but he's only a side character in our narrative today, since he...

How should we live? You don't ask yourself that question, right? Oh, you don't? I guess I'm the weirdo here then. There are so many shoulds in our lives, especially now during Advent. Should we send Christmas cards, should we visit our estranged extended families? We should be living with joy. The candle that was lit this morning is a representation of that joy. Although it doesn’t come across as such, this scripture is about joy. Last week, we began this set of scripture with John the Baptist, and he was brought to focus on the Messiah - whose time has not come yet. He was sent to prepare the world for the arrival. Screaming at the crowds who come to you, doesn’t seem like the right vibe? Let’s go through the text slowly to set the scene…  Luke sets up John like this… the crowds came to him to be baptized. Again - still in the wilderness, so these are wanderers, sojourners, disconnected people who wanted to belong. They were looking for something, even something that co...

  Here we are, one week closer to Christmas. Hope you are starting your preparations well. Who is done with their shopping? For the first time in a long time, I think we are done, if not very close to being totally done with our preparations in our own home. Our tree is up, and decorated, even if our cat likes to nibble at the branches at the bottom. The outside lights are up, and we even have a spotlight for our garage that has various snowflake shapes in it. We were gifted it from my mother-in-law last year, and it ended up in the garage, but somehow got moved (let’s be honest, I was probably the culprit of that) and so it fell BEHIND some of the shelving, and behind a piece of plywood on the floor. Thankfully, Tadjena is amazingly thorough and relentless, so she was able to find it after looking for what feels like two weeks. So - yeah - we’ve gone through our to do list, and making sure it’s getting done, and with that comes a sense of peace. Are you one who really likes being ...

  What is truth? That is Pilate’s next sentence after the reading today. Pilate wasn’t the first to ask it, and we’ve been asking ever since. The essence of truth is such a vague question that it wields a complete spectrum of answers. Is the Bible true? Is Jesus true? How do we know? I know these are pretty fundamental questions of faith, but sometimes we need to start at the beginning to build that foundation on which the rest of our beliefs rely. This reading is only four verses, but there’s so much here to unpack, so let’s go.  Today is the Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the year before Advent. For a bit of history, Pope Pius XI created the feast day in 1925. He did it to curb the smoking kindling that was starting to burn through Europe. This year is the same time in the United States that Calvin Coolidge is president; the middle of the so-called “Roaring Twenties” was happening, the split right between the Prohibition years, when alcohol was illegal. Mar...

  So - here we are in November! I’m getting excited about the football season, the temperature dropping, and Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. We are also finishing up the liturgical year, because we start the year at Advent, which this year is kind of early - the Sunday after Thanksgiving, November 28th.  Anyway - I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll get there. Today, however, we are looking at the Gospel reading from Luke, found in Chapter 12, verses 38 to 41. This is typically referred to as the parable of the Widow’s Mite.  Now, let’s go through what’s happening here. We need context, because we were not part of the original story. This is a pretty common text here for stewardship, and on its surface, the story is perfect for it. But when we dig deeper, Jesus packs a lot into his parables for it to be brought out.  We are still in the passion week, during the after arriving in Jerusalem, and this story happens right after the text last week. A...

     What’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten? I occasionally like to try new things. There’s been a list around Facebook that lists things like a snake, possum, or famously includes haggis for a few years. For those who don’t know, it’s a traditional Scottish dish, made of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, and among spices and other flavorings, but wrapped in the animal’s stomach like a casing for sausage. I don’t mean to turn your stomach so early in the morning, but that is something strange. The weirdest thing that I have ever eaten is blood sausage. I spent Christmas in Norway about fifteen years ago, where it is a traditional dish to make for the holiday. Just even talking about it, I get the memory back. The family I was with waited in anticipation for my reaction and laughed when I didn’t have the nerve to finish. It has a strong flavor, and yet the spices still didn’t cover up the apparent blood taste.       Anyway - I digress. As much as th...