Author: Aaron

Lectionary 12 (B) — Job 38:1–11

My father died in 1991, when I was ten. (That sentence is designed to make most of you feel old.) Thirty years. Sometimes I try to drag up memories, and it’s a struggle. There are moments that rise to the top, though. And they all seem to have a theme.

My parents had a party for my fifth birthday, and rented a video camera, one of the big, early consumer models that took a whole VHS tape. I still have the video. It features a good hour of footage of the inside of the lens cap. It also features my dad, annoyed with me the moment I got home from school. The camera was supposed to be a fun surprise for me; I demanded it be shut off. I was kind of a brat back then.

Lectionary 11 (B) — Ezekiel 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34

Today’s Old Testament reading helps us understand the purpose of prophecy. Many think the prophets are about foretelling the future. But today’s prophecy proves otherwise, because Ezekiel’s prophecy doesn’t come true.

Before 600 BC, the Israelites were mostly ignorant of the outside world. Sure, a few trade routes went through their land, and they knew other places existed. But those trade routes always went through the land, and never to the land.

The Israelites were subsistence farmers, usually having enough to eat, but never more. They had to rely on God, because there was nowhere else to turn. When things were too lean, they invented and borrowed other gods to rely on as well.

Lectionary 10 (B) — Genesis 3:8–15, Mark 3:20–35

Joan is one of those people who takes a LOT of patience to be around. If you meet her today, you might think it’s because of the memory loss and dementia that’s set in and become such a big part of her existence now. But the truth is, she’s always been a bit exhausting. It really has more to do with the relationships in her life.

Joan grew up on a farm in Minnesota with her parents, a twin sister, and two brothers. She had two pet pigs, whose names were Wiggy and Waggy. When she was little, she would ride around the farm on them, and when she got a little older, they became her best playmates. I suspect they met their end the way that all farm animals do, but in seven years of knowing her, she never told me. She never told me the names of her family members, either.

Festival of the Holy Trinity (B) — Isaiah 6:1–8

The rabbis tell us that God in scripture is like a beautiful, precious diamond, cut expertly by the finest jeweler, with seventy faces. You could look into one and find yourself lost in it, staring forever and trying desperately to take in all of its beauty. But if you do, you’ll only get to see a tiny slice of it. You’ll miss the view through all the other faces. You can never quite see it all.

Festival of Pentecost

Genesis 11:1–9. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

Sixth Sunday of Easter (B) — Acts 10:44–48

I learned something new this week, and it’s cool enough that I want to share it with you. To make sense of the world, we need to divide our experience up into different categories. Man and woman, old and young, big and small, red and green. The categories we use, we share with other people in our culture, so we can communicate effectively. But it may surprise you that, with even these most basic divisions, not every culture does it the same way.

You can see this most easily with color. In English, we have eleven major color categories: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink, Brown, Black, Grey, and White. Japanese doesn’t have a separate category for Green; they just call it a shade of Blue. Russian splits what we call Blue into two categories: Blue and “Glouboy” (light blue), the same way we split Red and Pink. And weirdly, many languages in the world divide colors into just three categories: Black, White, and Red.

Fifth Sunday of Easter (B) — Acts 8:26–40

Sometimes, the readings for Sunday worship have words that are difficult to pronounce. I’m not saying this because of our reader today; she did a great job. But this Sunday, three years ago, I was preaching in a congregation in New Jersey.

The pastor’s chair was WAY too close to the lectern, so when the reader came forward, I had to move to a folding chair behind the organ console, where the congregation couldn’t see me. And thank God for that. The reader began:

Then an angel of the Lord said to Flippy, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza…” So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethuppan Enooch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethuppians, in charge of her entire treasury.

Fourth Sunday of Easter (B) — John 10:11–18

A few years ago, the New England bishop’s office offered leadership training for congregations, and the churches I led joined their second cohort. One month, our homework was simple. Go out into public places and eavesdrop. Sit in a restaurant or bar, and just listen to what people are talking about. I’m a a Starbucks junkie, so it was easy for me to do.

Third Sunday of Easter (B) — Acts 3:12–19

I’m always a little startled that the crowd doesn’t turn on Peter immediately when he preaches to them in today’s reading from Acts. He’s very accusatory and direct. Pilate “decided to release [Jesus], but YOU rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you. And YOU killed the author of life.” If you get a chance to preach in the greatest religious center in the known world, to speak to God’s people and give them an insight into the very heart of faith, you probably shouldn’t start with accusations of murder.

Second Sunday of Easter (B) — John 20:19–31

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” I wish Acts described Christian community today. But it’s mostly an ideal.