Season of Creation

Mark 10:2-16

You may remember the hydro blackout in summer of 2003. Many homes were without power for up to two days.  Do you remember what you were doing? At the time I was a young teacher in my early twenties on summer break staying with my parents. And on that weekend I had a side gig of preparing the meal for my...

This Sunday we honour and remember residential school survivors and families and those who never came home.

James often sounds like what could be called

“Mother’s advice”,

Something anyone might remember their mother saying to them:

Like:

Be careful who you spend time with.

Watch your tongue.

Be kind to others.

Mark 8:27-38

The Gospel opens with Jesus in conversation with the people, Who do people say that I am? He asks of his followers. 

I am reminded of a poem penned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while in a prison. He compares the exulted way in which others sometimes see and speak of him, with the more uncertain and vulnerable way he sees himself....

When someone says something horrible one is often too shocked to know what to say. So what does the woman respond?

Does she insult him back, and tell him to go back where he came from, back to the sticks, back to the backwoods of Galilee?

Does she confront him and say “how dare you call me a dog”?

Anger, in certain circumstances, is completely justified. 

But it shouldn’t lead.

It should follow listening, and talking, and dialoguing.

Feeding the 5000

The crowd gathered. It was a big crowd gathered near Jesus.  Or as close as they could get.  The hillside full. Five thousand people, John’s Gospel says. And that’s likely just counting the men. A crowd that could fill the Aud at or beyond capacity. 

On the grass, the people came together. The place...

I could just play it safe and hoard my privilege to myself, 

or I could make myself more vulnerable and take some risks, 

potentially take some flak by standing up a little for those people who rate lower on the privilege scale: women, LGBT, People of Colour, 

because they have to endure harassment and discrimination on a scale that I never have had to experience. 

“Their love is cemented in a covenant Jonathan makes with David- a commitment to one another in the form of a union.
This text does not require a reader to have a finely tuned gaydar to be able to see it as an example of same-sex commitment.
The emotional attachment between the two men is undeniable,
and the fact that their relationship was publicly condoned by the men in the army is significant”. (Queer Theologies, Chris Greenough, 2020)

Sermon Pentecost 6B 

In the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about family camping trips in the Adironacks, to the tallest peak called Mount Marcy or in Algonquin, Tahawus.  Robin recalls how her family taught her the importance leaving the site in good shape. Cleaning up the campsite had the goal of leaving it...