RoboPreacher

can you say what you want To Be A Sermon on  Jeremiah's Call and Temple Sermon Well, you’ve made it through another Thanksgiving. How was it? These days Thanksgiving is something of a mixed bag, isn’t it? Like so many of our other big holidays, Thanksgiving is chock full of EXPECTATIONS . Everything had better be just right ; the turkey come out of the oven at time, the kids well-behaved, the family healthy and close-knit to boot.   They seem simple enough, but all these expectations are colossal ! We crush ourselves with them! Like in my family; this year, as usual, we all received the call about what we could and could not be bring up at the big meal.   On the big day, over turkey and mashed potatoes, we all followed the rules. For a few hours, long enough to get through the meal, we pulled it off too. We kept kept-up the illusion that everything was just fine. That there is no tension in our family. No dark corners in our histor...

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew! Well; there you have it … You have to admit, though, it is a little ironic… I mean here we are, going through all the trouble of showing up when we could be anywhere else; hoping maybe God would show up too, hoping we would see God today. Only to hear that God isn’t here. God has already beat us to the door, apparently. God is outside these walls; albeit amongst those folks who are hardest to be around, maybe even the ones we try to avoid. Isn’t that always how it goes, though ??? But; there you have it anyway … If nothing else at least this parable is straight-forward. When we care for ‘the least of these,’ we take care of Jesus himself; and conversely when we fail to take care of the least of these we ignore the Son of God. Yes, although it is only a small consolation at least this parable is easy to understand; hard to do , but easy to understand…  I suppose it goes without saying, though, that u...

& if we're to have any hope, that's where we need a king to reign   TheGospel of The Lord! Today is our celebration of the reign of Christ; today is Christ the King Saturday/Sunday! Today is not merely a celebration of the fact that Christ is king, though. No, today is much more important than celebrating any old king; today is a celebration of the kind of king Jesus is. And so it is on this auspicious occasion, celebrating the kind of king Jesus is, that we also celebrate the end of the church-year... Next week we will begin Advent and start the church-year all over again. So as we celebrate the end of the church-year, Christ the King Saturday/Sunday, we should pause... We should pause because the church-year is not an arbitrary thing. The church year is a way of keeping time to invite each one of us into the divine drama of salvation history, a way to see our story in light of God's. The church-year is a way to infuse all of our days with meaning, with a sens...

for your trials & tribulations   The Gospel According to St.John the Eighteenth Chapter! Maybe I spent too much time in Washington, but I just love a political drama. With all this time between the past election and the upcoming lame-duck governing session, I just don't know what to do with myself. Luckily, for all us folks who love salacious news, this week the Gospel if full of political intrigue. The main player is Pilate - he's the big-wig. But, we should add a little nuance. While Pilate was, basically, a mayor-ish person in Jerusalem, to Rome he wasn't big fish. In fact, we can tell that Pilate didn't really have a lot of rank by his post. The Jerusalem post was not the most grandiose assignment. Jerusalem was not part of Pilate's political aspirations, he had bigger plans himself. To be Rome's appointee over insignificant, constantly conflicted Jerusalem was not a high-post at all. More than likely all Pilate's order i...