16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, RCL)
44 results found.
April 26, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Psalm 23
When I pray the words of Psalm 23, the “you” I address them to is God. But I hope others will overhear.
Dementia and resurrection
Perhaps it's only when we let go of who and what our loved one was that we can receive who they are now.
by Samuel Wells
A shepherd who cares
This Sunday of words and songs about sheep and shepherds has always challenged me. For most of my preaching life I’ve been in or near a city. Now I live in New York City, where as far as I know even the Sheep Meadow in Central Park has no sheep.
Yet here is an enduring image from Jesus, an image captured perhaps millions of times in our art, our songs, our stories.
By Robert Rimbo
Sunday, July 22, 2012: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Jesus listens patiently to the disciples. Then he tucks them in for a nap.
In life, in death, in life beyond death
It’s the second movement of Leonard Bernstein’s choral work, Chichester Psalms. A boy soprano (or a countertenor), in the “role” of the shepherd boy, David, sings in Hebrew the opening verses of Psalm 23. He is accompanied–sparingly, fittingly–by the harp. The first several measures are tender but not tentative; filled with sentiment, but without sentimentality (this per Bernstein’s instructions). When the women’s voices take over the text at גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת . . . (Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .) there’s an ethereal echo-canon effect. This part of the movement, when executed well, is something sublime.
The wall of hostility has come down
Christ "has broken down the dividing wall. . . . that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it."
With or without us
Have the disciples started to think this is all about them? I know I would.
Easter 4B (John 10:11-18; Psalm 23)
This is no voluntary association, no transactional contract. The sheep do not earn the shepherd or elect him.
Wrecking crew: Ephesians 2:11-22
The world is full of walls. Everywhere we go, there are fences, gates, partitions and other ingeniously constructed barriers—all aimed at keeping something or someone in and keeping something or someone else out. We need walls.
Move on: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Samuel, the Billy Graham of his day, was adviser to the political leader Saul, the Pete Rose of ancient Israel. Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel. But soon (to quote James Thurber), “confusion got its foot in the door” and went through the entire “system.” Samuel observed Saul disobeying the explicit word of God, and it became Samuel’s job to inform Saul that God had rejected him as king.
Sheepish?: Psalm 23; John 10:22-30; Revelation 7:13-17
Although the images of shepherd and sheep wind their way through these lectionary texts, they are difficult images for the contemporary church to embrace. I recall many of the adults in one congregation cringing during a children’s time a few years ago, when a well-intentioned volunteer tried to teach the children a song that had them “baa-ing” for Jesus. What are we teaching our children, some of us wondered: To follow the crowd without question? To have no mind of one’s own? To expect someone else to take care of us?
We were aliens: Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
If the Ephesians forget who they were, they will presume God owes them something.