Staff Trax

Today, begins our 40-day journey of Lent. That time between Ash Wednesday and Easter when we are invited to examine our own lives so that we might identify those things that keep us from fully loving God and from living the lives we have been created to live. It is a time in which we are challenged to give up, or fast from, those things that prevent us from living lives that that glorify God.

Now,…

As we begin our story today, Luke says, “Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up the mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28). The first question we ought to ask ourselves is this: Eight days after what “sayings”? Well, if we go back just a few verses, we learn that about eight days earlier Jesus had been praying privately when the disciples…

Last week we started reading what we call Jesus’ “Sermon on the Plain.” This is a series of teachings, beginning with the Beatitudes, which we read last week, that Jesus offers his disciples that are intended to help his disciples understand a way of living that is different from the ways of this world. As I noted last week, these teachings offer us a way to live “holy lives.” And today,…

Our Gospel text today is the beginning of Luke's version of Matthew's "Sermon on the Mount." Like Matthew, it begins with beatitudes and ends with a parable about building a house on a sound foundation. Unlike Matthew, it’s much shorter, and takes place on a plain, not on a mountainside; we call it the “Sermon on the Plain.”

Now, as I have done the past couple of weeks, I think it is…

So, how many of you woke up today and said to yourself, "Today, I will be an evangelist!". No one? Well, I guess that doesn't surprise me, but you know, week after week, we end our time of worship with something like, “Go in peace, share the Good News!” and in return, we shout back “Thanks be to God.” In less fancy terms, it is as if at the end of the worship we are saying, “Go, evangelize…

Today, we got the rest of the story! When we ended our reading last week, all was well. Jesus had read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah on the Sabbath. In the reading we heard the words of the prophets say, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let…

Today’s Gospel story is only half the story; we will get the other half next week, but it is critical that we focus just on this first half today, because from this story we get a clear understanding of what Jesus’ mission in this world was and what our mission is today. Since the Church began on Pentecost over 2,000 years ago, we have struggled and argued over many things: what to believe,…

As a veteran of many weddings, I am always interested in listening to wedding stories. Not only have I presided over 50 weddings, I have also been intimately involved in two family weddings, my son’s and my oldest daughter’s, and now this year we are in the midst of planning our youngest daughter, Dana’s, wedding. Weddings require so much planning and there are so many details to ensure that…

Well, Christmas is definitely over. I mean, for the past few weeks we have been talking about the baby Jesus, or at least the small child of Jesus, but today, very abruptly, we jump right into the life of Jesus the adult. Just prior to our reading today, Luke tells us that John was in the region of the Jordan River baptizing people and that “crowds” were coming out to be baptized. John’s message…

Our Gospel story today is another one of my favorite stories in scripture. I am fascinated by how these “wise men from the East” would travel such a great distance to a faraway land to pay homage to a “king” they weren’t even sure was real. It is an incredible story for us to hear, but it is also a story that creates frustration for me.

Now, for a few of you, you know my frustration.…