Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year A, RCL)
51 results found.
I was an elementary-school pickpocket
Thirty years later my petty crime came back to haunt me.
April 22, Easter 4B (Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18)
The "jobsworth" and the good shepherd.
by David Heim
What people need from their pastors
The ailing young man wanted to be face to face with God. I opened my shoebox.
by Samuel Wells
A feast of scriptural language
Sarah Ruden writes some of the most sumptuous words about Bible words I’ve ever read.
We need to talk about 1 Peter 2:19-25
On Good Shepherd Sunday, it's tempting to wander there beside the still waters.
The Good Shepherd, early fourth century, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican
April 17, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30
A shepherd’s staff has a crook for drawing the sheep away from danger, and a blunt end for prodding them toward places they would rather not go. This week’s texts embrace the tension between the two in the shepherd’s role.
Fearing evil
It feels to me like evil is hovering over the prison in the form of a government ready to kill a woman who prayed with me when my father was dying of cancer. There isn't a thing I can do about it except pray this psalm and damn if we can't get it right.
A psalm for the living
In his years as a pastor my husband read the 23rd Psalm at the bedsides of quite a few people who were dying. It was the most frequently requested passage among those who were facing their own going and still able to choose. When I began to volunteer for hospice, I found, as he had, that even for people who had wandered far from church, even for the skeptical and the uncertain, even for those who were unused to prayer and didn't want to be prayed over, the 23rd Psalm provided a place of return that was beautiful, familiar, inviting, and reassuring.
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.
Business of the kingdom
The New Testament offers two compelling models for our relationship with money. When translated into a vision for a whole society, each is flawed.
by Samuel Wells
The Jerusalem church's measure of love
This week’s short passage from Acts gives a snapshot of the Christian community in Jerusalem, including a list of essential practices.
Sunday, May 11, 2014: Acts 2:42-47
Luke’s report of the church’s economic sharing interrupts our reading of what might otherwise be an easy passage.
What reaches children? The Sunday school challenge
Churches need to take time to discern their particular Christian formation mission. Only then can they choose curricular resources to support this.
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
Eating in ignorance
Reconciliation requires relocation. To see the effects of our food choices, we have to get close to the land.
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.