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It's Not About the Stuff

Our Gospel story today is often titled the “Parable of the Rich Fool,” but before we just skip over the accusation made against this man and talk about what this means for us today, I think it is critical that we understand why God calls this man a fool. Was it wrong for the man to want to store up his riches? Was it wrong for the man to save his abundance for the future? Does God think it is…

Teach Us To Pray

Prayer in the Gospel of Luke is an important spiritual practice. In fact, it is mentioned more than 60 times in Luke. In this Gospel we are told of Jesus praying at his baptism (3:21); Jesus praying before selecting the twelve (6:12); Jesus praying on the mountain before the transfiguration (9:28, 29); and in our story today, Jesus was praying before the disciples asked him to teach them to pray…

God's Perfect Grace

This Parable of the Good Samaritan might be the most familiar of Jesus’ parables in all of scripture. No matter where you go, if you talk about being a “Good Samaritan,” everyone knows what you are talking about. Everyone knows it is a story about caring for others and always being willing to help others. It’s a story about always being willing to do the right thing. It’s a story about…

Not Just for the Professionals

This past Monday a small group of us gathered in the Salem Café to discuss our Bible readings for the past couple of weeks from the Bible Challenge. As we started, one person said something to the affect, “How can we be assured when we share the Gospel that we are convincing others to follow Jesus?”. That is a great question, and I think our Gospel lesson today gives us the answer.

If…

No More Excuses

Today’s Gospel text is filled with statements that probably make many of us cringe. Luke begins by telling us that Jesus had “set his face toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). In other words, Jesus was now steadfastly determined to fulfill the mission God had for him, and in fulfilling that mission, when he got to Jerusalem he would be arrested and killed. Jesus knew the difficulties he was about…

More To Come

Today is Trinity Sunday, which means it is the one day of the year that we celebrate a human-made doctrine. The term Trinity and its meaning do not appear in scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity is a human attempt to explain how God chose to reveal God’s self to the world. As we read the scriptures we discover that throughout the centuries God revealed God’s self in many ways: wind, fire,…

Get on With It!

Fifty days ago today was Easter Sunday, the day the church celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus. On that day, Christians all over the world gathered in churches to attend worship, sing songs, give thanks and praise to God for not just the life and death of Jesus, but more importantly for his Resurrection. For the past seven weeks every time we have gathered for worship we have begun our time of…

Let's All Be One

Did you catch all that? “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”…

A Command To Love

As we prepared for Easter on those final three days of Lent, we read this same Gospel text as part of a longer reading for Maundy Thursday. This story takes place on the night before Jesus was killed. Jesus was having a meal with his disciples and as part of that meal he had washed their feet and he had just predicted a betrayal by one of his disciples. Before he went on to say any more, he said…

A Voice of Love

Did you ever ask a question to which you already knew the answer? I know I used to do it as a kid all the time, especially when my folks had told me I couldn’t do something or get something. The question that I would ask after they would say ‘No,” was "Why can’t I…?". And oftentimes I asked it so much that my parents would get mad, and then I knew I was done asking it when my mom would…

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