“Last week we saw God provide them with meat and bread, manna and quail that fell from the sky, and all the Israelites had to do was go and pick it up. Today, it’s water—or, specifically, the perceived lack of it. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Complain, complain, complain.”
“Woven within these confessional phrases are also converse actions we can take in dedicating ourselves anew to walking in the Way of Jesus. In other words, the prayer of confession also implies a prayer of dedication and discipleship. What we confess leads us to know what we can do in service to Christ. Because sin is a sundering of relationship, the path to atonement calls us to try to repair and restore our relationship with God and each other.”
“Today is the pause before the plunge that sweeps over those who remember and mourn. I wonder about how we honor the memory of those who gave their lives for others, and how we remember the messages of love as well as the images of destruction from that day.”
“This is a pretty hard thing Jesus is calling and modeling for us to do: to not treat people as disposable even if they seem to deserve it. Too much of our society is eager to write people off based on snap judgments, even based on appearances, while not even making a token attempt to get to know people who are different from us. It’s much easier to make assumptions, judge harshly, even mock, and then cut people off as having no claim upon us at all.”
“The darkness is where creation takes place. The darkness is ancient. The darkness was the companion of God long before the universe came to be. And it is from the creative, velvet darkness that God’s call to Moses, and many of us, actually originates.”
“Yet if we take seriously what Paul is saying here, we are assured that worship is not just bound up in rites, no matter how beautiful; or communal singing of praise songs, no matter how uplifting; or even in sermons, no matter how illuminating. Of course worship online can feel isolating, but it also can be a powerful tool of evangelism. So long as people of faith set their hearts and minds on living a life dedicated to following the Way of Jesus in the mundane moments of our lives, true worship can never be halted.”
“In both of these stories, people of different backgrounds were eventually able to talk with each other and learn from each other, and they left these encounters feeling that they had received a blessing. The horizon where “self” meets “other” converges, and both parties are changed forever, by recognizing each other’s common humanity at a time when keeping the population at each other’s throats was a useful political strategy encouraged by the empire.”
“The miracle of this story is the generous heart. The generous heart that encourages and empowers the generosity of others. That’s the miracle. And it’s a miracle that can transform our own situation from one of want to one of agency. As those disciples helped encourage the crowd to share what they had, suddenly there was more than enough. In taking action rather than allowing the uncertainty to rule their perspective, they—and we—learn the power of bold, generous action to change lives.”
“This day may we too, especially, stand firm in witness to the love of Christ in the world. May we be emboldened ourselves, all of us, to live into our callings as witnesses and ministers of Jesus, as steadfast disciples even in the face of injustice and the attempts to silence the testimony of women in communities of faith throughout the ages.”
“Jesus is not our accuser, but our advocate and intercessor. And within this reading, we see a description of the working of the Trinity: the Spirit helps us to pray when we are overcome; God the Creator is for us when all else seems to be arrayed against us and everything seems to be conspiring to break our spirits; the Son, Jesus Christ, has died for us and intercedes for us when we cannot intercede for ourselves.”