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Shaken to the foundations

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Seventh Sunday of Easter May 16, 2010 Acts 16:16-34 Sometimes when we think we know a story, we can be oblivious to the power concentrated below the surface. The stories themselves might even glance over things which can shake our foundations. Like the story of Paul and Silas. It’s known so clearly and truly as a sign of divine action, bringing God’s people out of captivity. We recognize this story, having heard it with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, the return from exile, and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We long for this story, in the hope that we too may be delivered from persecution, trial, and captivity. In the middle of the night, when Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises to God, “a strong earthquake shook the jail to its foundations. The doors opened, and the chains fell from all the prisoners” (Acts 16:26, CEV). Hallelujah! But after China, Chile, Haiti, just this year... can we read past the destructive power of an earthquake? A quake strong enough to shake the ...
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Christmas Eve

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Whose Story Would You Rather Believe? Luke 2:1–14 [15–20] With the intimate associations of Christmas to home and family, comfort and security, Christmas Eve is not always seen as an evangelical opportunity. And this may not be the best time to pressure people into making a personal commitment for Christ. Yet Christmas is a crucial time when we can choose whose story to listen to, whose story to believe. One story blares on Caesar’s Network News. This story shows the Emperor literally ruling over the world. Images of Caesar and Roman gods fill every city, proclaiming “Caesar is Lord.” This story reinforces the message that you had best submit, in order to enjoy the blessings of Roman-imposed peace. Significance and value are defined by how you fit into the Imperial story. In this story, Joseph and Mary were a flyspeck among countless conquered peoples, their role simply to pay tribute and glorify Rome. Yet there is this little bitty baby... If it were up to Caesar, you would never...
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He Told Me Everything I Have Ever Done!

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Third Sunday in Lent March 27, 2011 John 4:5-42 She came to the well every day at noon, when the sun was hottest. The other women in the village had long since gone back to their households, lugging the heavy water that sustained life and health in a dry land – as millions of women still do, daily, in poor and developing nations all over the world. Coming to the well at midday meant that she could avoid the dulling pain of being shunned and frozen out of the cheerful group that would meet each morning at the well, to carry the water in the cool of the day. Some traditional depictions of this story portray this Samaritan woman, someone who was very much an “other” to the Jews, as a sort of Bible-story version of Zsa Zsa Gabor or Elizabeth Taylor – a “use ‘em and lose ‘em” character with all her many husbands, a “woman of the world.” But more recent – and careful – scholarship, that takes the anthropology and social structures of that time and place into account, gives us a differe...
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