The Rev. Candy Snively shares a personal story about a remarkable act of love: “Laying down our lives isn’t so much about dying for someone else as it is living for someone else, putting their needs ahead of our own as an act of love. And that kind of act of love is the basis for a little story I’d like to tell you about.” (Today’s Gospel reading: John 10:11-18)
The Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista offers three suggestions for a more peaceful common life (Luke 24:36b-48): “We all bear wounds, proclaiming a peace that we don’t always feel. So what might this peace mean for us today? I’d like to offer a few suggestions… 1) turn off your phone every once in a while, 2) go deeper into your own spiritual life, and 3) go out proclaiming that peace into a world that needs to hear it. It sounds so simple, but it maybe some of the most challenging work we could ever do.”
The Rev. George Adamik reflects on John 20:19-31, doubting Thomas, and a distressing moment from his daughter’s orchestra class.
On Easter, the Rev. George Adamik reflects on John 20:1-18: “The message of the Resurrection is Christ revealing to us the life that we’re called to live, the life we’re called to share, and he models for us the need to reach out to the suffering and the oppressed to bring about wholeness and healing in a broken world.”
At the Great Vigil of Easter, the Rev. Carr Holland: “To get Easter, to receive Easter in its depth, you have to become familiar with apparent failure.”
The Rev. Katie Gillett reflects on our encounters with silence in a homily on Good Friday (Isaiah 52:13-53:12, John 18:1-19:42).
On Maundy Thursday, the Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista reflects on John 13:1-17, 31b-35: “This moment feels like the eye of the storm. Jesus, the great teacher and wonderworker, stops for just a moment before the culminating act of his earthly ministry and simply shares a meal with his closest friends.”
On Palm Sunday, the Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista discusses Mark 14:1-15:47 (The Passion): “It’s all too easy to draw abstract conclusions about the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion, all too tempting to simply see it as a God who desires punishment… but that is to miss the drama of the story, to miss the fact that before theologians tried to make sense of Jesus’s sacrifice, the disciples found it important to tell and retell and write down the story as they best remembered it.”
The Rev. Katie Gillett reflects on Jeremiah 31:31-34: “Do you ever take time at the end of the day to recall the day and reorient yourself? When I think of reorienting, I think of turning away from the anxieties, worries, and stress and turning instead to joy and peace.” Episcopal Deacon Katie Gillett is currently attending seminary at Duke University and will be with us learning and preaching until the end of April.
The Rev. Carr Holland reflects on Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21: “This is a story of God remaining oddly, mercifully just. The Israelites sin, they are punished, they look upon the bronze snake and the cost of their sin is squarely seen. They choose hope, a will to see and change, and they are healed.”