Author: Dana Kramer-Rolls

“The early Church had little to go on except the letters of Paul and the memory of the Apostles and first disciples, and the practice of the Eucharist and Baptism by water and the Holy Spirit. For that first Church it probably didn’t matter so much how they saw the Incarnate One. They worshiped the one Holy One in Jesus’ name as instructed, practiced charity as instructed, and developed methods of creating social and religious bonds amongst each other by praying together and eating together.”

“There are reasons I go back to Scripture to study how Jesus acted and spoke and taught. In that jumble of redacted bits and pieces, remembered stories and sayings from the Apostles and first disciples, cobbled together into a canonical anthology, there really is, as we confess, all that is needed for salvation.”

“Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man is dependent on the grace of his Father to open the hearts of any who would offer hospitality to Jesus and his own. And Jesus knows the hearts of each of these seekers. Be sure of that.”

“Let’s start with the sparrows, and remembering that God may delight in every hair on our heads, but we didn’t put them there. Like the sparrow, we are the little children. Watched. Protected. And pretty vulnerable.”

“Jesus felt our sin, our dysfunction, our imperfection, and was willing to be so true to us that he took up his cross, gave his life, died for it. And then rose again to sanctify us, not in our perfection, but our imperfection, our humble, bumbling attempts to be better, to be more like him, to know his Father.”

“It isn’t until the woman has washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair that Jesus speaks up about his host’s neglect, and then only after the woman had been disgraced by her so-called betters. Suddenly both Jesus, the dishonored dinner guest, and the woman, the dishonored sinner, are on the same level.”

“The Easter season is all about salvation. It is all about our yearning to know the Risen Christ. Like Mary in the garden, we want to hear Eternity call us by name.”

“We are to love God, totally, and to love our neighbor, but now the neighbor is everyone.”

“These are the bonds of a parent to a child, between a bride and a bridegroom, of lifetime friends. These are the bonds which bind us as the Body today. And they all hang on Jesus’ death so that he can rise in eternal life, ascend to his Father and complete his task in creating a new covenant for us. Silly sinful us, in the dark of Lent and the blazing light of Easter.”

“Now they are opening a crack for another’s well being. And at table they know him by his blessing and breaking of the bread.”