Sometimes you must simply rely on what others have said, not because you are lazy or wanting, but because they have said it so well. Besides this, you bring with it a sense of appreciation for eras long since passed. The Easter sermon of John Chrysostom (circa 400 AD:) This sermon was actually preached over […]
A man was blissfully driving along the highway, radio blaring, not a care in the world – when he saw the Easter Bunny hopping across the middle of the road. He swerved his vehicle to avoid hitting the bunny, but unfortunately the rabbit jumped in front of his car and was hit. The basket of […]
I refuse to start out with Christmas jokes or with Ground Hog Day jokes…just because it is April 1st! But I figure, at this time of the morning – “Bunny jokes” are fair game: What do you call a group of bunnies marching backwards? A receding hareline. How can you tell which rabbits are the […]
Holy Saturday is oh, so different. The time now is too early for the Vigil of Easter and it is way too early for the celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord. We are caught in the “in between time.” We are stuck. It has been said, that “when one door closes another door usually […]
Good Friday is the day when we enter into “the reality” that Jesus – our savior, our Lord, our Rabbi and our friend – was betrayed, denied, arrested, spat on, laughed at, whipped, beaten and nailed to a cross and left to die in the heat of the day – naked and practically left all […]
I do not expect you to remember this. I do, however, expect – that I remember it. The word “Maundy” is strange. Maundy Thursday always gets “strange looks” and reactions. The word “Maundy” is always questioned. What does that mean again? I have forgotten! Maundy is not Monday. After all, we only hear it “once […]
The betrayal is all the more horrendous coming after the foot-washing in which the depth of Jesus’ divine love is being revealed. Perhaps it is even the foot-washing (itself) that really truly sets things into motion. Once again we see Jesus deeply agitated as he bears witness – “I tell you the truth, one of […]
[For me,] Mark’s gospel is overpowering…and strong. It is so much more than a “simple report” of a “Roman trial” and a “brutal atrocity.” Mark tells us – Jesus was “handed over” by the Jewish authorities. And we get it: Rome’s concern was to maintain the peace. The Jewish Authorities did not want the Romans […]
John’s thinking is “way different.” Apparently, for the gospels’ author, this passage signals the “beginning of the end” in Jesus’ path toward crucifixion. The line has been drawn in the sand – and Jesus is leaping over it…and he is “high fiving everyone” as he does it! At the very same time, it also encapsulates […]
We have already decided that John is quite different from the Synoptics of Mark, Matthew and Luke. John’s gospel is somehow “loftier.” It is more poetic, more theologically based. It is intentionally more creative, more advanced and more evolved. John is clearly writing to a much “more sophisticated audience.” The section before us today, speaks […]