Are we open for healing? For grace?

 Scripture: 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 and Psalm 130  • Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-24 or Lamentations 3:22-33 and Psalm 30  • 2 Corinthians 8:7-15  • Mark 5:21-43

This week's gospel provides a look at God in man made manifest as Jesus crosses barriers to bring healing, salvation and life to the lost, the hopeless, and the dead. As Jesus heals the woman who had been bleeding for years, and raise up a young girl who was dead - allowing the "unclean" to touch him while he touches the "unclean," also provides us insight into the faith Jesus invokes in us.

This lesson follows lessons the last two weeks when God shows us what can be done with faith the size of a mustard seed, and inspiring a young shepherd boy to defeat the power of the giant Goliath. God moves, not only in mysterious ways, but shows up in the most unexpected places.  And yet with faith as small as a mustard seed, we can have "Expectant Hope," as 

Lucy Standlund says. The Rev. Canon Frank Logue gives us God's perspective in "A Beloved Child of God."

What does it take to be open for healing... for grace?

Conquering Fear

 Scripture:1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49 and Psalm 9:9-20 or 

• 1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 18:10-16 and Psalm 133  • 
 
• Job 38:1-11 and Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32  • 
 
• 2 Corinthians 6:1-13  • 
 
• Mark 4:35-41

This week, reflect on the story of David and Goliath and think about the small and the great, and the  source of his strength and confidence. Consider the Shalom - Peace, be still! - of the one who calms the storms. 

For further reflection see Robert Cornwall's " Sleeping through the Storm," and Steve Goodier's "What I Pray For." Put yourself in the place of the disciples on the ship. 

And finally, as Jesus crosses to the other side, consider The Rev. Dr. Richard Burden's "The Other Side."

Losing Control

 Scripture: 1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13 and Psalm 20  • Ezekiel 17:22-24 and Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15  • 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17  • Mark 4:26-34

The desire to control is something we have from toddlers to old age, although  I have less desire to control situations in retirement than I did providing and caring for my family.  It never leaves us entirely, though. 

This Sunday's gospel parables of the gardener who sows and then sleeps, and of the mustard seed look at the mysteries of life, especially when we have no control, or limited control. In "The Sleeping Gardner," Debie Thomas offers us astonishing insights and life lessons as she considers Jesus' parables. Astonishing? Isn't that what a wonderful life should be? It's not always easy to cease worrying, and cede control, but we miss a lot if we don't heed the lesson of these parables. 

Seen and Unseen, the Spirit Leads Us

 Scripture:1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20) and Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18  • Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Psalm 81:1-10  • 2 Corinthians 4:5-12  • Mark 2:23-3:6

Our Scripture this week is full of hearing and responding to God's call. What do we hear and heed in our busy lives? Who does God call? How? How can we hear God''s call? As we read this week's Scripture, we are invited to consider the value of human life, of all life, especially when reading beautiful Psalm 135, and Jesus' teaching about feeding the hungry, and healing on the Sabbath, telling us that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath is made for humankind. 

Both the passage from Paul's second  letter to the Corinthians and Mark's gospel invite us to see what cannot be seen. Read Susan Butterworth's "Human and Divine."

 The Rev. Danáe Ashley's "Bread, Law, and Spirit," considers questions we ask, such as "Why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I supposed to do with my life," discussing ways of discerning God's call to us, and what is life affirming, and what is not.

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
139:1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

139:2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

139:3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

139:4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

139:13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

139:16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

139:17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

139:18 I try to count them -- they are more than the sand; I come to the end -- I am still with you.

Experience the Triune God

  Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8 and Psalm 29  • Romans 8:12-17  • John 3:1-17

If St. Augustine confessed that he didn't understand the concept of the Trinity, I don't profess to understand it. But maybe that is the problem. Trying to understand it. Two articles this week have helped me appreciate it, though. Think love in relationship in which we are invited to participate.  See The Rev. David Lose's "Trinity:Three-in-One, Plus One!" and Dan Clendenin's "Trinity, Mystery, and Mercy." Particularly poignant in this article are the characterizations of God from the "The Shack" by Paul Young.  "What Young has written — and his critics are right about this point — is really a doctrine of God in story form. But it's no Athanasian Creed with technical abstractions. He pictures the trinitarian God who welcomes us back to the shack as El-ousia, "a large beaming African-American woman" (Father), a "small, distinctively Asian woman" named Sarayu who collects tears (the Spirit), and a Middle Eastern man dressed like a laborer (Jesus).The main character Mack discovers that God isn't like he thought. He's not the product of his projections, or the neat formulas of academic theology. He's perfectly good. He intends to heal and not humiliate us. Mack learns to trust him fully and believe that God is near. That's the good news on Trinity Sunday." 

A couple of interesting side notes. The term οὐσία is an Ancient Greek noun, formed on the feminine present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, i.e., "to be, I am." "I  am" is the name of God, and is one of the "I am" sayings of Jesus.  In the Nicene Creed, it is said "the Son is of one being with the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son." The Eastern church says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, not the Father and the Son (the filioque clause - meaning "and the Son.") Both the Western and Eastern churches have homoousion, as opposed to homioousion, in their Creeds.

Homoousion (/ˌhɒmoʊˈuːsiən/; Greek: ὁμοούσιον, romanized: homooúsion, lit. 'same in being, same in essence', from ὁμός, homós, "same" and οὐσία, ousía, "being" or "essence")^[1][2] is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus (God the Son) as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father (ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί). The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son. Those notions became cornerstones of theology in Nicene Christianity, and also represent one of the most important theological concepts within the Trinitarian doctrinal understanding of God. The extra "i," or "iota," in homioousion, means similar to, not the same, proposed by Arius, and was rejected by Athanasius and is not included in the Nicene Creed. 

Sarayu - The name is the feminine derivative of the Sanskrit root सर् sar "to flow"; as a masculine stem, saráyu- means "air, wind", i.e. "that which is streaming."

The Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth

 Scripture: Acts 2:1-21 or Ezekiel 37:1-14  • Psalm 104:24-34, 35b  • Romans 8:22-27 or Acts 2:1-21  • John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Today we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, which is known as the birthday of the Church, fifty days after Easter. Jesus is leaving his disciples, but he 

asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit,  the Spirit of Truth to strengthen, to advocate for them, and us, his beloved. 

What does the Holy Spirit do for us today? What does the Spirit of Truth enable us to do? See The Rev. Kathleen Walker's "The Advocate," and Debie Thomas' "When You Send Forth Your Spirit."

Why, and for what, do we pray? And what did Jesus pray for?

 Scripture:  Acts 1:15-17, 21-26  • Psalm 1  • 1 John 5:9-13  • John 17:6-19

Today we have John's account of Jesus' prayer for us - not what we call "the Lord's Prayer." In "Pearls and Grit" The Rev. James Liggett tells us Jesus, the night before his arrest - his last evening with his disciples,  his friends, prays for them, for us, knowing how difficult things will be for his followers in the pain, suffering, crime, hate, and violence of the world, then, here, and now. He likens it to that of an oyster who must produce a pearl, or die, when a grit is ingested. 

Debie Thomas, in "A Lover's Prayer," asks why do we pray, and what do we pray for? If you find yourself praying more, or with more urgency these days as I do, or if you rarely, or never do, you owe it to yourself to read her article as she examines her journey in praying.

The Rev. Dr. James C. Howell tells us, "God doesn't sow cancer cells in people's bodies, God doesn't crash planes into buildings, God doesn't prescribe one child to live under a bridge while my children are in soft beds. God is not in control, or let's say, God does not choose to be in control--because God is love, and love just can't or won't control. Paul says, "Love does not insist on its own way." God could have made us like marionettes, so God could manipulate us and everything to suit God. But God yearns for our love, and cuts the strings, risking the wounds Jesus was about to incur when he prayed for us."