RoboPreacher

& now you finally know that The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke the 24th chapter ! The resurrected Jesus turns up in their midst; they look upon the wounds from that terrible day. Indeed, it is the same Jesus they followed, ate with, watched preform miracles, and then, horrifyingly, gawked at as the nails were driven through his hands and feet, and finally ran from as he died. Now, though; now here he is. It’s Jesus, and he still has the scars to prove it. Instead of being overjoyed, though, Luke tells us there was joy,yes;  but joy and disbelief, joy and wonder… It’s an odd detail, isn’t it? You’d think that after the terror and tragedy of the cross, Luke would be more than ready to move on, and talk about Jesus perfect victory that casts out all doubts. Only that isn’t what Luke does; which should serve as a perennial reminder that the truth is stranger than fiction. In that simple line, you could even call it throw away one, you get the ...

this i've tried and now refuse... The Holy Gospel according to St. John the 20th chapter! Later on that first Easter, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the jewish leaders, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he showed them his hands and his side.  The disciples, seeing the master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: “Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?” But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We saw the Master.” But Thomas said, “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t beli...

by love are we thus bound The Holy Gospel according to St. John The intensity continued to build, hard as that may be to believe. So even those stone-hearted disciples couldn’t miss the significance of that night. As the Passover drew near, Jesus gathered these twelve for a meal.  Although they couldn’t have imagined it would be the last one they shared together with this Jesus; none of them could have missed the gravity of that evening, either… So they gathered with this Jesus they had been through so much with, and tried to make heads and tails of everything that was beginning to spin wildly out of control.  Suddenly though, in the middle of the meal, this Jesus stops, takes off his robe, gets a basin and water, and begins to do something embarrassing, embarrassing and inappropriate; he washes his disciples’ feet. As everything was coming to a crescendo, nothing was getting any more coherent for the disciples that night. Sure, at that time it ma...

you look for Jesus who is not here The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark ! Even on the most ordinary of occasions it’s a bit of an unsettling story, isn’t it? What, with the empty tomb, the young man announcing that Jesus isn’t there, he’s been raised, he’s ahead of them, in Galilee; just as he said . Yes, in it’s own way, it’s kind of a disquieting story…  As today is Easter Sunday, though ; what’s really unsettling about this story is how it ends . After hearing that Jesus is risen, the women don’t exclaim, ‘he is risen indeed, alleluia;’ rather they run off afraid , and they don’t say a a single, rotten word. Yes, it’s an unsettling story; especially today.  Maybe, though, it is a fitting Easter story. After all, it isn’t always easy to say “alleluia,’ is it?  That’s how it was for those women that first Easter.  After a night of undoubtedly restless sleep, they wake up at the crack of dawn, get everything together and go to THE t...