“Some bishops and priests have called this time in the life of our church, “a fast.” A fast is a chosen spiritual discipline. What if, instead of feeling that losing the Eucharist is something just happening to us, we choose this as a fast, out of love for God and our neighbor?”
“But other impossible things have happened too. Miraculous things. Signs of life overcoming old ways of death. The people who pick and pack and truck our food are understood to be essential. People are giving away their stimulus checks to make sure the unemployed can eat. San Francisco has found housing for homeless people in the newly empty hotels. Jails are setting people free. Grocery stores have special hours for elders and people wait patiently in line. More of us are baking bread and planting seeds, transforming our relationships with our bodies and the earth. Neighbors are connecting, in many places for the first time.”
“When the Hebrew people were dispersed after the Babylonian Captivity, they missed the Temple in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. The psalmist of Psalm 137 said that they did not know how to praise God with their songs if they were dispersed from their community of faith. Perhaps in these days, we feel dispersed as well from our communities of faith as we are quarantined.”
“The idea of caring for the earth and its resources is a concept far older than Earth Day and goes back to the earliest chapters of the Bible. Earth and all stars were created by God and given to us to care for and nurture so that it might provide for us abundantly.”
Jesus in Our Suffering. Guest Karen Ray Nelson joins to talk about the implications of this week’s gospel reading