The Rev. Carr Holland considers Matthew 21:1-11 and Matthew 26:14- 27:66 on Palm Sunday: “We gather here today and this week to remember that there is a cost to human choice, a cost to what we look past or ignore, the moments when we lose touch with what it is to gather up in the intended goodness of God.”

The Rev. Carr Holland reflects on John 4:5-42 and Romans 5:1-11: “We are each given a life. We’re invited to look out our eye sockets and see beyond the surface, to see one another by the well, to ponder each other’s need of care and wisdom, and together, to act to deepen life.”

The Rev. J. Carr Holland III discusses Matthew 5:38-48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The Rev. Carr Holland reflects on John 1:29-42: “Jesus goes in this section of the Gospel from unknown to Messiah… The following has begun, and we are part of that following. Here is the question that the Gospel leaves for us, ‘Where do we see Christ, and how do we follow?'”

The Rev. Carr Holland meditates on Matthew 1:18-25: “In Matthew, it is Joseph who cradles Jesus in a blanket woven of character and compassion. He offers the lineage that gives shape to the Christmas crib. He lives the ethical dilemma: law or love. He dreams a way into a compassionate life and yields to it as God’s gift of life for him. His actions become the straw of Christ’s comfort. Perhaps for each of us there is a gift that waits for us as Advent yields to Christmas.”

During this timely feast of Christ the King, the Rev. Carr Holland reflects on the vulnerability and compassion of Jesus (Luke 23:33-43): “There’s very little reflective listening in the actors who bring about Christ’s death. The passion and death of Christ is driven by fear, deep human fear. Fear of the potential loss of power, fear of the divine Other’s expectations, fear of an expectation that we can grow more tender and less harsh. Fear that we will lose something.”

The Rev. Carr Holland considers Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10): “In this political season, we can find Zacchaeus. In fact, we can find several of them. Someone who has prospered and you’re not sure by what means, how they have come by their wealth, and the level of their morality. Zacchaeus was despised by others, his own people, though he was rich. He had no place, so he was viewed by some as outside of God’s grace and care. Maybe we don’t all know his feeling of alienation, but many of us know what it’s like to come to a moment when we realize what we have held as important suddenly is not.”

Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35
“Where I am going, you cannot come.” Last summer, the community theater called On the Isle on Nantucket invited us to a wonderful story called The Trip to Bountiful . . . You may know the story. It’s a story about the longing for home; it is about our yearning for a place of comfort and security and stability, a place of deep acceptance and unconditional love, a place where we can be ourselves, a place and a people that feed our souls . . .

John 20:19-31
The passage of House Bill 2 recently and the social debate that’s gone on after it got me to thinking a lot this week… about how much difference there is between law and Gospel. They are never the same thing. The issues of race and forgiveness and care seldom show up in the laws that grab our attention — that is so core to the Gospel. It got me to thinking about what it means to be left out, what it means to be overlooked and not understood.

John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Memory is a terrible and a wonderful thing. As we focus on the bombings in Belgium just now, there is memory, not just of those whose lives were lost or who are scarred by the events there, but here too. Many of us may well journey back to 9/11, those we knew, how we felt. The hurt or the anger that lingers in our bones at not feeling safe anymore, not feeling always safe. And voices fill the airwaves, “Who do we blame? Who are we to watch?”…