RoboPreacher

& we were wrong The scripture for Maundy Thursday is John 13 This has easily been one of, if not the most disastrous Lent. Hasn’t it? Truth be told, though, for me and Amanda it actually started way by in Advent . When her beloved grandmother, Jean, died.   I remember how Jeans death put our Advent into a tailspin … And at first, I fought against it. Even though our schedule was upside-down, I struggled to make sure we kept the house in order, got gifts, and even took time to read our Advent devotional… But as time went on, it got to be too much . By the time Christmas rolled around, we were doing everything we could just to keep up…   After Christmas, New Years and Annual Meetings, though , life seemed to have returned to a semblance of normalcy… …But then; well, you know what happened… If I had thought Advent was a mess, this Lent made Advent seem like something straight from Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” Take ...

that are keeping us on our feet A Sermon for Maundy Thursday : Isn’t it just like Jesus, to make us do something we’d just as well avoid? All this business of taking off shoes, having someone wash our feet, for heaven’s sake. It’s all just too much!  Today is Maundy Thursday, though. On this evening, we hear of Jesus’ last night with his disciples. On this holy day, the church gathers her children and puts before them Jesus’ command to actually love one another, to risk vulnerability. To risk humility. Tonight we hear of Jesus’ last night with his disciples.  The command he gave them, as he said what had to have been so hard to hear. How soon, he would go where they could not . The way their life together, was going to rupture all too quickly. Admitting that in a matter of hours, nothing would be able to put it back together the days they had, had with Jesus… Of all the poignant moments in Jesus’ all too short life and ministry, this is the p...

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...

but i'd probably end up pushing you over As we hear Jesus promising, ‘ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another ,’ this evening something in us whispers, "Lean in. Listen closely. These words we hear today are important." Listen to that whispering, your instincts are right, because these words we hear in Today’s Gospel are Jesus' last… Today we enter into a Holy journey - here we start. Today the great three days commence, the tridium. Here we begin , with Jesus' final words. Jesus' last words... For centuries Christians have insisted that to understand the tragedy of the of the cross or the triumph of the empty tomb, we must hear these words first. Jesus' last... These are the words we need to hear, to carry with us so that we may persevere through the dark day ahead. These last words will sustain us as we journey from heartbreak to hope; from darkness to light and ultimatel...