by Amy Norton-Benfield, February 20, 2025
Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem, and ultimately to the cross. In our weekly church school teacher Bible study, we were discussing the text for this Sunday, in which a woman described only as a “sinner” tearfully approaches Jesus and anoints his feet with oil, drying them with her hair. One of our members described how they envisioned what came next as a… Read More
by Kent French, February 13, 2025
Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem and the cross. “Are you the one who is coming, or should we look for someone else?” This is the question at the heart of this Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 7:18-35). It’s not so different 2,000 years later. A lot of people in our midst are asking “What is going on? How are we to respond? What’s… Read More
by Anna Jeide-Detweiler, February 06, 2025
Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem, and ultimately to the cross. Does God notice our suffering? Does God care about what is going on in our lives, in our world? Have you ever wondered; does God really care about my problems? If you answered yes to any of these questions — you are not alone! Last week we saw Jesus heal a man’s… Read More
by Amy Norton-Benfield, January 30, 2025
Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem, and ultimately to the cross. Whenever I heard mention of the Pharisees in the bible growing up, I always thought of them not quite as the villains, but villain-adjacent. They seemed to me to be cranky, pedantic goody-two-shoes who are always trying to trip Jesus up and catch him going against the teachings of his faith…. Read More
by Kent M French, January 23, 2025
Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem and the cross. My preaching professor prided himself on assigning us scripture texts that had “a stone in the road,” meaning a theological idea that might be hard to handle in our modern context. He advised that we had to figure out whether to climb it, go around it or blast right through it. One of… Read More
by Kent French, January 16, 2025
Good News and common cathedral. One of the pivotal moments in Jesus’ ministry happens when he goes back to his hometown of Nazareth to preach in the synagogue (Luke 4:14-30). We call it his “inaugural” sermon. The congregation is bristling with excitement, waiting to see and hear how their favorite son has grown “in wisdom and stature.” Jesus preaches from Isaiah 61. Which is all well and good until he starts interpreting it, basically saying that the Good News is for everyone, not just for those who believe like we do. The crowd is so pissed off that they run… Read More
by Amy Norton-Benfield, January 09, 2025
We’re returning to the Narrative Lectionary for the remainder of the winter and spring, following along with our young people in Church School. We’ll spend the seasons of Epiphany and Lent in the Gospel of Luke, catching glimpses of God as revealed through Jesus, his ministry of healing, and his journey to the cross. My friends, we’ve made it! We’ve heard the angels, followed the star, worshiped the Christ child, and gone home by another way with the Magi. Advent welcomed in the new liturgical year, Christmas welcomed the newborn Prince of Peace, and January ushered in the new calendar… Read More
by Kent M French, January 02, 2025
Throughout Advent and Christmastide, we’ve been following “Words for the Beginning: Advent Reminders for New Seasons” from A Sanctified Art, diving into the themes of blessing, companionship, risky hope, abiding love, holy laughter, crooked roads and a whole lot more! Are you a planner or a just-let-it-unfold-er? Perhaps some of both? Ever had the best-laid plans not turn out at all like you expected, and the result was better than you could have imagined? Or ever just followed your hunch and seen where the wind took you? On Sunday, we’ll once again re-visit the Epiphany story of the Magi, those… Read More
