Mark 7:1-13 / Proper 16B / 26 August 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
Tradition is kind of a divisive word today. Are you contemporary or traditional? Oh, you’re one of those “traditional” churches, which means boring, stuffy, ritualistic, with lots of hymns by really old, dead guys. Traditional means “old” to many people. Out of touch. Not in tune with the changing times. Tradition can also mean for some people the things that don’t change. Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions, and don’t you dare change them! You know how it is at family Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone sits in their assigned seats, the same seats they’ve had for the last 30 years or more. Families have traditions. Are you Christmas Eve people or Christmas Day people? And even if you can’t stand turkey, you stomach it for one day out of the year because, hey, it’s Thanksgiving and that’s the tradition.
John 6:51-69 / Proper 15B / 19 August 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
Wisdom and Folly. Light and Darkness. Spirit and Flesh. Those are the contrasts set before us this morning in our three readings. I don’t know if that’s what was intended, but they dovetail beautifully. To put these into more familiar Lutheran terms: Saint and Sinner. Faith and Unbelief. Old man and New.
Mark 6:45-56 / Proper 11B / 29 July 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
What on earth is Jesus up to, much less thinking here? Let me sketch out this morning’s Gospel from St. Mark. First, Jesus makes them, that’s right, He insists that His disciples get into a boat with the sun setting and darkness settling in. Second, He insists that they get into this boat as the sun is setting without Him. You heard it correctly. “You boys just go ahead, I’ll catch up with you later. See you, bye.” And as they’re pulling away from shore, He dismisses the crowd whom He has just fed with five loaves and two fish and He goes off to some mountain to pray. So there they all are: the disciples packed into a boat pulling oars, Jesus on dry land all alone. This is a good plan.
Mark *;30-44 / Liturgical Date (Proper) / 22 July 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
Five loaves and two fish in the hands of Jesus feed a wilderness party of 5000 men, not counting women and children, with twelve baskets full of leftovers. This is the kind of miracle we can sink our teeth into. Literally.
Mark 6:1-13 / Proper 9B / 08 July 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
Familiarity breeds contempt. So the saying goes. The closer you get to someone, the more likely you will be disappointed in that person when all your romantic illusions and preconceived notions are dashed to pieces. You get a taste of that when you return to the place where you where born and raised. Your nesting ground. The place where they knew you when you were knee high to a grasshopper and they still remember all the windows you broke, all the times you got sent to the principle’s office, and all those sins of omission and commission over which the psalmist prays when he says, “Lord, remember not the sins of my youth nor my rebellious ways.”
Mark 5:21-43 /Proper 5B / 01 July 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
If you have ever rushed a sick or injured child to the emergency room in the middle of the night, you know what it’s like to be Jairus. Jairus was the synagogue ruler with the very sick little girl who rushed to Jesus and begged Him to come back to his house. You can hear the panic almost leap from the page. “My little girl is dying. Please Lord, come back with me now. Lay your hands on her and heal her. I know you can do it. Please. Hurry!”
John 3:1-17 / Trinity Series B / 03 June 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? - John 3:12
Poor Nicodemus. He comes to Jesus by night to have a little rabbi to rabbi conversation. Compare theological notes perhaps. Talk a little shop, teacher to teacher. He even offers Jesus the highest of complements: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Clearly, Nicodemus is impressed. Not bad for a Pharisee.
Acts 2:1-21 / Pentecost B / 27 May 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
Pentecost. Fifty. Fifty days after the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread there was the harvest festival. The ingathering of the winter wheat. And the celebration of the giving of the Torah to Moses on the mountain accompanied by wind and fire.
Fifty days after the Jesus’ passover from death to life comes the harvest, the ingathering of the first fruits. Three thousand baptized and added to the number of the disciples in one day. And again there is wind and fire. The wind is heard; the fire is seen. The wind is the breath of the crucified, risen, and now reigning Lord Jesus blowing out over His Church, filling it with His breath and His words. There is proclamation in all the known languages and dialects of the Mediterranean world, from the mouth of simple Galileans who had never taken a language course before. Everyone heard the good news of Jesus in his own language and dialect. “For you.” In your ears, no doubt about it.
John 17:11b-19 / 7 Easter B / 20 May 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
One of the great miracles of Christianity and the Christian Church is its continual survival. As I like to put it, it’s simply miraculous that the Church has survived nearly 2000 years of what can only be described honestly as “gross mismanagement.” The Christian faith we confess, the faith “once handed to the saints” as Jude says, the faith that has come down to us in the creeds and confessions of believers who came before us, has not changed across the centuries.
John 15:9-17 / Easter 6B / 13 May 2012 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. - John 15:9-17
Today’s reading from John continues Jesus’ “I am the vine, you are the branches” saying. Joined to Jesus, you are a fruitful branch; apart from Jesus you can do nothing. The “fruit” which Jesus is speaking of is “love.”
Follow the flow. From the Father to the Son to you. As the Father loves the Son, so the Son loves you. And now the invitation: Abide in my love. Stay there. Rest there. Dwell there. Hang in there. Be loved by Jesus as Jesus is loved by the Father. This is where “love” begins - not in our hearts, not in our decisions and choices, not in our initiative. It begins in the heart of the Father and His love for the beloved Son. It flows to you from the Son by way the cross, the font, the altar, His Word.