I’m thinking of three women in the Gospels, and a fourth: The woman with the flow of blood who touched the garment of Jesus and was healed, the Canaanite woman who pleaded with Jesus to heal her daughter, and the woman who anointed Jesus and was attacked for “wasting” money. Jesus replied that she had …
Beautiful Feet and Fingers
"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!" Paul quotes that line from Isaiah 52:7. My feet are not beautiful, especially when they hurt like they are doing today. And yet they are beautiful when they come to preach the good news to you. The quality of our shoes or clothes means …
The Needed Touch
Jesus called her 'daughter' - θυγάτηρ. I bet no one had called her that in a real face-to-face encounter. Certainly not in the 12 years that she had the flow of blood, which made her untouchable, an outcast from society. She was cured by being recognized, by being loved, by entering relationship. But it started …
Passion Before Commandments
“Are we still of any use?” Bonhoeffer asked in one of his letters from prison before he was executed by the Nazis. I think it was Archimedes who said, δός μοι που στώ και κινήσω την γήν. If a few people really believed the words of Jesus and were guided by him, the world would …
The Truth is in the Wounds
In the Book of Acts, chapter 5, we read: “And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women….(The apostles are arrested and imprisoned.) But at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, “Go and stand in the temple and speak to …
Life from a tomb
In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, pitched his tent) among us…. No one has ever seen God except the one who is in the bosom of God, the only begotten Son - he has made God …
Life breeds life
In a Gospel reading earlier this week, we heard Jesus say: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit… And I, …
Shout together with the stones: Hosanna!
Today is Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church. It is a sign of our spiritual immaturity 2,000 years after the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that we Orthodox prefer to stick to an antiquated, hopelessly out-of-sync calendar and thus pretend to have the genuine date for Easter and what comes before Easter. Total example of …
Amazed and Afraid
And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…. (Mark 10:32-45) It was a …
A sermon for times of unbelief
We are living in times of fading faith. I won’t bore you with numbers, but recent research and polling data shows a marked decrease in people who identify with church or church participation. Yet, most Americans still say they believe in God. Which of course raises the question what God they believe in. Even many who …
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