Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL)

It’s common to confuse ministry leaders with Jesus. We can see ourselves in Judas’s question to Jesus, “How is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Why do we have to carry the message?

The church’s recognition of the reality of radical evil opened its music to dissonant, jagged 20th-century soundscapes and what they could express.

People do not float through life in the bubble that is their skin. We are grounded, dependent beings that live through the lives and deaths of others.

I want the kingdom of God to be civilized. If possible I'd like to be able to keep sleeping in my own bed.

For my money, John’s is the only Gospel in which Jesus seems really lonely.

Jesus’ promise that he and God will come make a home with us sounds like good news to me.

Our so-called secular age purports to have disenchanted us of our pre-modern superstitions. Many of us find God’s stark absence from our daily affairs to be our most prominent experience of the divine.

Our brains are wired to allow us to read each other's minds, to feel each other's person.

In John 5, festival scenes in the holy city are juxtaposed with the view of five porticoes full of invalids. Imagine dropping by the nursing home on your way to Christmas Eve services. One place is festive, filled with pretty clothes, color, light and music. The other location features crutches, canes and people who cannot hide their desperate need for healing.

"A virus breached the campus computer network last week and the entire system crashed. Repair has been difficult, but I bring a word of hope.” The director of information technology at the college where I was about to lecture on eschatology added, “This has been frustrating for everyone. Files have been corrupted and programs do not run properly. Please be patient. Some files have been restored. . . . Any day now we will be back to full operation.”