Rev. Zach

Luke 9:51-62 We shared part of this reading last Wednesday in our Ash Wednesday service, so I want to give a little recap from that service for the first section (verses 51-56). To begin with, it’s important to remember that this followed the Transfiguration of Jesus when he took Peter, James, and John up Mt Tabor to pray and encountered Moses and Elijah and Jesus’ clothes went sort of ‘supernova.’ After that the disciples were struggling to heal a boy, but Jesus did it with barely a thought – except to call them all faithless and perverse (literally turned away from God). What we know from all of that is that Jesus is the embodiment of the law and the prophets, and he knew at this point that he was headed toward Jerusalem and the cross in order to accomplish what God had in mind on a cosmic level instead of what the people all around him wanted on an individual level. On the way to do that, he still had some teaching and healing to do, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that t...

Luke 9:28-45 We’re going to start with a little game today. I’m going to give you categories of people, and I want you to think about them. I want you to think about how they look. Think about, without judgment, what ethnicity or gender you assign to them. Think about how you feel, or would feel, if you were having a conversation with this person. You may think of someone you know that could be described by one of these words, and that’s fine. Don’t go too deep. Just react. If it interests you, you can think more about them later and give this person a story (I like to do that with strangers when I’m waiting on a flight). OK, here we go: Doctor, Nurse, Person in the Service Industry (Restaurant/Retail, etc), Person Experiencing Homelessness, Immigrant, Politician, Sanitation Worker I have to admit I was a little tempted to do the Sesame Street song, “These Are The People In Your Neighborhood,” but I didn’t give Jake time to warm up on that one. The thing is, these are the people in ou...

Luke 7:1-14 Today we have received two stories of miraculous healing, and this time it wasn’t just a “withered hand.” Both of the people Jesus healed were near death or at least perceived as already dead. For those of us raised with these stories of faith, sometimes these stories become all too easy to read and to hear without question, but I have to say that they are hard for me to hear today. I don’t know about you, but I find the healing stories of the Bible some of the most difficult to reconcile with our ever-expanding understanding of the complexity of the created order, and that is particularly true when it comes to death. Before going any further, I’d like to say to those who may have lost a loved one due to COVID–19 that this passage is not intended to trivialize your loss. Death is, unfortunately, a part of life, and when the scale of loss is as high as it is today we need to be clear in stating that every loss is still significant – not just to you and to me, but also to Go...