How are we supposed to cope with the despair that sets in when our known world is stolen and an invading, oppressive regime steps in?

  The Easter experience is about the birth of a new consciousness.  It is a consciousness that burst upon the followers of Jesus

I'm inviting folks to engage with 14 of the questions that Jesus asked his followers during his ministry.  From Ash Wednesday, 2/22, through Easter

Even and especially in these difficult times, the Lenten journey can be an encouraging, enlightening path to hope, resilience, and new life.

Today is Holy Saturday, that period of mourning, disillusionment, anger, fear, and other heart-wrenching emotions that occurs between our recognizing the realities of injustices and tragedies of the past and present, and our harboring the hopes for life and resurrection that hang on tenuously, if at all, for a better future.

Now, I know Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. And following Jesus is something I take super-seriously. But I’m angry and worried, and pretty much everyone in the United States is. It isn’t easy to follow those particular instructions.

We are living these days under what feels like house arrest, as we observe "social distancing." That's an oxymoron, if there ever was one. Human beings are soft-wired – if not hardwired – to be together. Nowadays, the kindest thing we can do for each other is to keep our distance.

The profundity of Christianity is that nothing in it has but one meaning. So it is with Easter Week.

Are you envious because of my generosity? The question seemed to jump off the page. Far too often, I have felt envious because someone got something I felt I was entitled to – and I realized that I, like the laborers in the vineyard, begrudge God’s generosity. And, of course, envy and entitlement are major impediments when it comes to living a truly grateful life.

Part 4 of a 4-part series leading up to Holy Thursday. Each day 3 disciples present at the Last Supper are highlighted. It is partially inspired by the Unity teaching of the Twelve Powers. Part 1 sets the context and Jesus speaks to Peter, Andrew and James. Part 2 is John, Phillip and Bartholomew. Part 3 is Thomas, Matthew and James son of Alphaeus.

I often cringe when I hear the words: “God be with us.” To me, “with” implies that God is a divine being separate from us, outside of us, called to be next to us and “on our side” rather than someone else’s. Jesus’ disciples were terrified when he was crucified. They thought he was no longer “with” them even though he had promised to be “until the end of time (age) (world)” (Matthew 28:20). He was buried in a tomb for God’s sake! How could he ever be with them again? But look closer at the definition. “With” also means “possessing.” Now that’s something to which I can relate.

Celtic Christianity, whose model was the beloved disciple whose head rested on Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper “listening for the heartbeat of God,” offered more equality between male and female leadership and less differentiation between clergy and laity, permitted married and unmarried clergy, innovated the use of soul friends/guides, believed redemption was possible through either sacraments or nature, recognized and valued the theophanies of the natural world, and recognized that everyone was a child of God, created in God’s image.

This coming week we have the opportunity to enact our faith with those fleeing violence and seeking sanctuary in our country. Doing so is how we can actually make Holy Week holy.

sadly in a world dominated by might, money, and power, some people look upon compassion, mercy, gentleness of spirit, inclusiveness and unconditional love as weakness. In a world blighted by terrorism, war and indescribable brutality demonstrated day by day, for example in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan; in a world where many have become indifferent, self righteous and just downright selfish; in a world where Bible passages are taken out of context to uphold racism, sexism, homophobia and unhealthy nationalism: these are the places in which compassion, mercy, gentleness of spirit, inclusiveness and unconditional love should work and speak.

As Christian people we all too often pay lip service to the fact that the political and religious context in which Jesus lived, thought and died, was one of economic, political and military domination by the Roman Empire. We also often fail to realise that this was also both the context in which the Christian scriptures were written and the life and death of Jesus was interpreted. Failure to understand these Jewish contexts leads Christians and the Church to misinterpret the underlying message and meaning of the life and death of Jesus the Jew of Nazareth. Whether we like it or not, I am convinced that Jesus had a political agenda as well as an agenda of compassion.

With a new understanding about suffering and how it victimizes the innocent and its aborts the Christian mission of inclusiveness, Jesus' death at Calvary invites a different hermeneutic than its classically held one.

As a progressive clergy person from my first day in the pulpit, thirty years ago, I always felt that everything from Lent to Easter Sunday was the most important and exciting season for Christians. It was another opportunity to teach and even to practice the path of kenosis, to move beyond our familiar boundaries of mind and body by learning to let go and change.

Matthew 16:13-28; Romans 6:5-11 This commentary is going directly through Matthew without regard for the traditional Christian liturgical year, so will not skip

Jesus is seriously dead.  None of the rest of it makes any sense otherwise.

Luke’s Jesus seems to be saying, pay attention to how you are listening to the message. Are you receptive (fertile); rocky (rejecting); thorny (resisting); or dry (uninterested)? Because . . . but here the non-sequitur called “to have and have not” throws us off the track. The Jesus Seminar scholars suggest that “Luke presumably wants the reader to know that those who grasp at the initial stages of faith will be given more to understand as they mature” (The Five Gospels p. 307).