John the Baptist – Episcopal Cafe

Are We a Voice Crying in the Wilderness?

December 11, 2017 2 Comments

Advent is about waiting. We are learning to be patient. We are learning the difference between being nice and being in God’s love.

Permission

November 9, 2017 No Comments

As Christians we are often tempted to minimize our own and one another’s violence. Everything from derogatory comments made about women to outright physical abuse are made light of and excused because we want to think the best of one another, confusing denial with love.

Perplexed

October 20, 2017 No Comments

It is the ‘Blessed is…takes no offense’ structure of the verse that perplexes me. I am blessed if I take no offense in what Jesus says and does?

Brood of Vipers: Worthy of Repentance

September 15, 2017 No Comments

Although John clearly gave them an earful, he doesn’t say “I’m not going to baptize you.”

Heads on the Platter

August 5, 2017 No Comments

The thing it reminds me of in our time is there always seems to be someone looking for somebody’s head on a platter, figuratively if not literally.

Speaking to the Soul: Behold the Lamb of God

March 2, 2017 No Comments

Here is the Lamb of God. In this Holy Lent, let’s set all else aside and hang out on the banks of the Jordan with him.

Speaking to the Soul: More than a prophet

December 15, 2016 2 Comments

When John the Baptist shouts, “Repent!”, he is admonishing us to turn away from the ways of the world, and to turn instead to the practice of love – love of God and love of our neighbor.

Speaking to the Soul: A Dark Gaudete

December 11, 2016 No Comments

…towards the end of his life he began to have doubts about who Jesus was and whether or not there was a coming kingdom. He was in prison, after all. The old authorities were still cruelly in place. In the darkness of prison, John was suddenly not so sure about Jesus.

Speaking to the Soul: Burned Illusions

December 4, 2016 2 Comments

Like a slithering viper tucked away in a crevice, this sort of mental credentialing is dangerous precisely because we can’t see it. The crowd gathered around John in today’s reading was different in many ways, but John addressed them all equally in their need to reform their lives.

Speaking to the Soul: Expectations

January 10, 2016 2 Comments

God wants the chaff too. Everything you do, all that you experience, every tear, and crushed dream, each droll moment is important in one way or another. Let’s not be limited by the merely comprehensible. There are forces at play which we don’t understand, but of which we are somehow — blessedly — a part.

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