This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday and we will enter into Holy Week, where we experience together the Passion of Jesus. In the Blog for this week we will continue with devotions for the next five Stations of the Cross, as we make the Via Dolorosa together.
For the next three weeks, culminating in Holy Week, I will share in the Pastor’s Blog those devotions I offered at each of the Stations of the Cross. Together on the Via Dolorosa let us follow Jesus bearing the cross as the path winds through the human hope and hurt of your part of Jerusalem.
Matthew 9:35–38; 10:5–7
As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”
I can tell you the exact date I was “redeemed” at 7:30 in the morning. The previous evening I was walking to my car and feeling very unredeemed when I could not find it. At the precinct house the officer checked in with the lot where towed felonious autos are incarcerated. Sure enough, my car had been towed.
We live in a time of increased hate crimes, a time when people are singled out and attacked for who they are. GLBTQ people, racial groups, Jewish people live in a time of heightened prejudice and hatred, just for being who they are.
n an episode of the television series “Young Sheldon” the famously germophobic child genius is hospitalized overnight following emergency gallbladder surgery. Due to his anxiety about the setting in which he finds himself, Sheldon is unable to fall asleep. His harassed and aggravated nurse suggests he try counting sheep. Sheldon acknowledges the suggestion but reports the intervention would be ineffective for him. He is afraid of barnyard animals.
Dear St. Luke’s partners,
The Lord be with you in these holy days. “Ash Wednesday” is known as the poet T.S.Eliot’s “conversion” poem, written after he joined the Anglican church in 1927. It goes deeply into the tension between spiritual barrenness and his hope for salvation of all things. We live in that tension, and on Ash Wednesday bare on our foreheads both brokenness and death, yet cruciform baptismal hope.
Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain.” So begins the account of the Transfiguration of our Lord according to Matthew. What follows is the amazing vision of Jesus, bathed in light and glory, accompanied by Moses and Elijah. For a brief, shining moment, the identity of Jesus as God’s beloved Son is confirmed. It was a strengthening of faith for both Jesus and the disciples. We are meant to see ourselves on this mountain, to have our own faith made stronger, to see that our confidence in Jesus is confirmed.
Gun violence in our country is a public health crisis. This year (as of February 4) there have been 4,297 gun violence deaths, including 2,442 suicides. There have been 107 gun deaths resulting from the defensive use of a weapon. There have been 60 mass shootings. (Source: Gun Violence Archive)
I think Judy and I have decided that 2023 is the year we will return to New Orleans. We visited the city many years ago and it has remained on my “bucket list” as a city I want to see again. It is a remarkable city. A resilient community. Despite crime, poverty, corruption, and devastating storms, it is a city with spirit. It is a welcoming city that has a lot to celebrate and knows how to party.
Three powerful lessons await us this coming Sunday from the Epiphany Four lectionary.
Our Epistle for Sunday invites us to focus on the cross and consider the many surprising and unlikely ways that God is with us. “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians: 18-31)