Blog (Page 18)
Open Eyes. Burning Hearts.
As y’all gathered for worship at Spirit in the Hills Sunday morning, the Luhrs and my family gathered with members and leaders from ELCA churches across Southwestern Texas in Corpus Christi for the annual Synod Assembly. This year’s assembly theme was “Open Eyes. Burning Hearts.” and our central scripture text was the Road To Emmaus story (Luke…
Practicing Our Faith Daily
When the council gathers at our annual retreat and sets out to create the Annual Roadmap for the next 12 months which will outline the specific goals we feel the Holy Spirit is calling us to pursue, and the metrics we will use to measure our progress, the first step is identifying four core values for the year. These values are the groundwork for everything that comes…
Keeping Christ’s Word
“Those who love me will keep my word,” Jesus says at the beginning of last Sunday’s gospel text (John 14:23-29). Which word? Jesus speaks words of teaching and instruction.He proclaims words of healing and forgiveness.Jesus offers words of peace and encouragement.He exhorts with words of identity. I think Jesus wants us to keep all of these words.…
Halfway to Welcoming
To truly welcome and include takes intention, consistent work, and nearly always requires a change on our part. As someone who doesn’t really have to give much thought to the ingredients in what I eat, even though I tried my best to prepare a meal that could be enjoyed by everyone in a group that included someone who eats kosher, another who eats vegan, and one with…
Tangible Good News
In Sunday’s gospel text (John 20:19-31), while the disciples are locked up in a room, afraid, grieving, and immobilized by what has happened – the arrest, crucifixion, and death of Jesus – the Risen Christ appears, brings a word of peace, inspires the disciples with the Holy Spirit (literally breathes it into them), and sends them out. But Thomas…
Stopped In Your Tracks
Living Resurrection
God has reached into the tomb and brought Jesus to new life. God reaches into the tombs we make for ourselves and those we are placed in and brings us to new life again and again and again. That is resurrection. That is Easter. That is Good News. God loves you, the fullness of you, so much that God finds you wherever and however and loves you to new life. This gift of new…
Stones Shouting, Palm & Garment Sunday, Notre Dame, Resurrection
As Jesus enters Jerusalem in the humble parade, without the trappings of a usual royal or Roman procession, the “whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen, saying ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the…
Extravagant Love
For the second week in a row (Luke 15, John 12), we had a Gospel text that mentions an extravagant sharing of love (a party thrown for a younger son thought dead, and this week Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with costly perfume). For the second week in a row there was someone (the older brother, Judas) so wrapped up in their narrow, self-centered mode of thinking and…
The Economics of Abundance
We’re steeped in a model of scarcity. The idea that something is scarce begins from a place of limits. There’s only so much of something to go around – time, money, water, food, land, hours of work to be divvied among employees, etc. In this mode of scarcity, for someone or some group to get more means there is less to go around, and potentially less for me, or for you.…