In the gospel reading for today we heard Jesus tell some bystanders who wanted Jesus to plainly say that he was the Messiah. Jesus replied: “But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Continue reading
In the gospel reading for today we heard Jesus tell some bystanders who wanted Jesus to plainly say that he was the Messiah. Jesus replied: “But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter. The ancient Old Testament allegory of Israel as Yahweh’s vine becomes deeply Christianized at this point. Jesus is the true vine of which the Father takes personal care, pruning the barren branches, trimming and cleaning the fruitful. These latter are the disciples who have accepted Jesus’ life-giving word. They are invited, encouraged to live on, to abide in Jesus. The Greek word for “abide/remain,” menō, occurs eleven times in these few verses, a repeated insistence on the return of Jesus by indwelling. The other all-important word is “love.” Just as “abide/remain” is the essential word of verses 1–8, so “love” becomes essential in vv.9–17. Consider how the “Vine and Branches” metaphor concludes: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” (John 15:16-17) Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle B. The first reading for this Sunday comes from Acts of the Apostles. There is a certain sense of appropriateness to that selection as we pay attention to the time after the Resurrection when the apostles and disciples were about the process of becoming “church” (ekklesia) – those who were “called out” to do the work of the Lord. At first blush it might seem odd that the Gospel looks back to the events before the Passion, Death and Resurrection. Continue reading
Note: still away from the parish, but here is another offering from the trove of homilies past.
After having graduated from the US Naval Academy – the first cauldron of forming leaders for the Navy and Marine Corp – and after finishing nuclear power training and submarine school, I reported as a bright shiny Ensign to my first submarine! I was ready to be a deep-diving, backing down full at crush depth, denizen of the deep – “Run Silent, Run Deep” and “Hunt for Red October” all rolled into one. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Easter. “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18) Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Easter. “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Verse 11 pushes beyond the imagery of Ezekiel 34 in its reference to the shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the sheep. A possible OT antecedent may lie in the messianic oracle of Zech 13:7-9, in which the death of the shepherd is required so that the flock can be purified. Verse 11 may also have points of contact with Palestinian shepherding practices; a good shepherd may indeed have to give up his life to prevent the decimation of his flock by wild animals. Yet the reference to the shepherd laying down his life is cast in a distinctive Johannine idiom, so that the reader of the Gospel cannot help hearing in Jesus’ words an allusion to his own death. Verses 15 and 17-18 will make those associations with the death of Jesus explicit, but at this point Jesus stays within the metaphor of shepherding. He works to build the interpretive frame of reference before he turns more directly to his own life and death. Continue reading
I do not watch a lot of sports on television, live-stream or in person – the one exception: the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. There was a transitional exception during the recent NCAA basketball tournament, men’s and women’s. After all, one had to catch at least a glimpse of Caitlin Clark. But whatever the sports event, one can not help but notice the preponderance of sports betting advertisements. It is estimated that people watching NBA, NHL and MLB events are exposed to online gambling messages — including betting company logos, commercials, sponsored segments and any time betting odds appeared on screen – as much as three times per minute, but generally at 1.5 to 2 times per minute. The majority of the on screen appearance are courtside and rink logos and company names. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Easter. Just before our gospel reading, in v.8, Jesus says: “All who came are thieves and robbers.” There cannot be a sweeping rejection of all OT figures – especially given that Jesus has already made references to Abraham and Moses as positive witnesses to him (5:45-46; 8:56). Jesus is referring to the kings of Israel condemned in Ezekiel 34, but also current day leaders of Israel, who treated the man born blind so badly. Of such leaders, Jesus says, the sheep did not listen to them. The man born blind certainly did not listen to them, but he listened to Jesus. Those who belong to Jesus, the true shepherd, hear his voice and not those of the false shepherds Continue reading
The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people, and especially of governments, always have effects that are unanticipated or “unintended.” We live in a world that is a complex system with interconnections we do not know, can’t or have not yet imagined, or as the American naturalist John Muir offered: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Continue reading
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