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Engaged

Pray the prayer, feel the dough, warm, sticky, full of life. Our Father, time passes, it rises, only to be punched down. Give us this day, smell it baking, see it rise, browning to done. Our daily bread, smell, texture, as it comes out, we butter the roughness. Given, broken, rising, smelling, tasting, crumbs, rough shell, all given, all made.

Hard Life

Mark 6:14-29 The commentators were wondering this week what to do with this reading of the beheading of John. Its gruesome and violent and doesn't seem to lead us on a path of discipleship. Most were suggesting to look at Ephesians instead and then it occurred to me, isn't this the point. We try and avoid hurt. We want a God who promises and easy way, a blessing filled life, after all there is such a thing called the prosperity gospel. That God will bless you if you live the right kind of life. And how many times have you run into people who have lost the faith because the going got tough? "I don't believe anymore because so and so died, was sick and what kind of a God would do that?" Where in the bible is this promise? Nowhere. We read story after story of exile, death, and trauma in the New and Old Testaments. We forget a lot of the stories which talk about the hard times, and we would like to avoid them, stop our ears to them and get them out of the way. Yet t...

Searching

John 3:14-21 This comes from the much larger narrative of Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus. It is important to remember this much larger story because it gives us the framework for this response. Nicodemus comes at night searching for Jesus because he has questions for this person who has been going around the land and teaching and healing people. He comes to Jesus wanting to know his connection to the God of Israel. How can Jesus do and say the things he does without a divine connection? Jesus responds and then more questions asked until we go into the third author of John, which is the Spirit. Now there are three authors in John. One is the author themself, two is the editor of John who likes to add in commentary regarding events or definitions to what this means to a good Jew, and the third is the Holy Spirit. Not in the defined way we know the Spirit today, but in a developing knowledge. A searching out for who and what the Spirit was. Another connection for our story tod...

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