I’m hardly the first person to post about the Fiftieth Anniversary of the March on Washington or Dr. King’s famous speech today. It’s late in the evening on August 28, 2013 as I sit and draft this post and I am sure that thousands of …
36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. (read more) Tabitha is a fascinating, …
April 14, 2013
I have really struggled with how to tell the story of Paul/Saul.
There’s the cliche – when he met Jesus his name changed from Saul to Paul as a symbol of his new faith…Except that doesn’t seem to be true. Saul is a name used by the Jews, and Paul a name used by Greek Speakers – like my dad’s aunt, Millie was called Milke by her Croatian relatives.
There’s the strangeness of what actually happens to Paul – he hears a voice from heaven goes blind, and then (for me) strangest of all,
Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again.
I assume that the author means something like fish scales…but I don’t know. Did they fall off immediately all at once, or immediately one scale at a time? Could other people see the scales or was it only apparent to Paul.
I don’t know!?!
A few weeks ago I came across a podcast by Rev. Robb McCoy, a UMC Pastor in Illinois and Rev. Eric Fistler, a UCC pastor from Connecticut. Besides its clever name “Pulpit Fiction” the podcasts have been great helps from two good exegetes and theologians about the lectionary texts of the week.
In this week’s podcast, the two pastors point out that while this story is always called, “The Conversion of Saul,” Saul actually plays a fairly small role in this particular episode. God is the main character in this story, it’s God in Christ who shows up in the blinding light and speaks to Saul, it is God who causes Saul to go blind, it is God who speaks to Ananias and softens his heart towards this enemy of the church. It is God who causes the scales to fall off of Saul’s eyes and God who moves Saul to be baptized.
This is God’s story, Ananias and Paul are supporting characters. That’s true in our lives too. It is God who calls, God who transforms, God who breathes life into. It is God who softens hearts and God who opens eyes. Lord, help me to recognize my role as supporting actress.
I’ve
Yesterday, I ended by saying: I love cookbooks. One of my favorite features of cookbooks is the trouble shooting guide, that way if your recipe doesn’t turn out, you can look at the trouble shooting guide and figure out what to do different next time. …
John 6 is a dense chapter with lots of little episodes. The chapter starts with Jesus feeding a crowd of 5000 men, (plus likely an equal number of women and additional children), with 2 fish and five loaves. There are 12 baskets of leftovers. The …
![Title: Calling Disciples[Click for larger image view]](https://i0.wp.com/lib6.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/HeQi_017.jpg?resize=420%2C420)
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. (Mark 1:29-31 NIV)
This story comes so early in Mark’s story of Jesus. He’s called his first disciples, and given his first sermon in the synagogue. He stops at Andrew and Simon’s house. Simon’s (later Peter) mother-in-law is sick with a fever. The brothers tell Jesus about the woman. He takes her hand and she’s healed.
The three verses that tell this story are so compact. Mark doesn’t waste a lot of words, but the details that he includes are so telling. “The fever left her and she began to wait on them.”
We kicked off our Imagine No Malaria campaign at church today, with the goal of saving 2500 lives in the next three years. Through education, bed nets, medicine, draining stagnant water and communication the United Methodist Church along with the United Nations, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are hoping to eradicate deaths from Malaria by 2015. This is such an exciting project to be a part of. To join Jesus in the work of healing fever. To save the lives of children.
I confess that I tend to think of the work of development organizations as benefiting the direct targets of the development work. Yet Simon-Peter’s mother-in-law shows us that Jesus and all of the disciples benefited from the healing of the woman’s fever. Immediately she got up and waited on those in her house. With her new health she uses her resources to bless others.
Who knows what genius, what creativity, what strength, what impact the world loses when each child dies of Malaria. Two years ago, a child died every 30 seconds on the continent from Malaria. Today that has been reduced to one child every 45 seconds. Praise God, but let’s keep slowing that rate down until no child dies from this disease.
I have four different nativity scenes. As I set them up I noticed something: all four of my sets had the Holy Family (Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus) which is good, Jesus is central to this CHRISTmas thing. Three of my sets had the …
Photo Credit: Ashley Holmes When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord …
One of the books that got me thinking about the theology of food this year is Take This Bread by Sara Miles.
Miles has a background as a journalist and a restaurant cook. She wandered into church one Sunday, participated in communion, tasted Jesus in her mouth and wanted more. She went on to start a food pantry right in the sanctuary of that very church. This memoir is a fabulous story of what happens when we get a chance to taste and see just how good Jesus is. This is not the story that I expected it to be, but is wild, free, engaging and true.
The book is available at Amazon. Purchase it through these links and I’ll get affiliate credit. Otherwise Richard and I have two copies and you can certainly borrow from us. Let me know what you think once you’ve read it.
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of …