The Rev. George Adamik reflects on John 6:24-35 and growing up during the turbulent 1960s: “We can live into God’s dream and God’s hope, and, as Bishop Curry so often says, step out of the nightmare that we have created into the dream God has for creation. When we look at the world today and our country, we can’t just say ‘it’s the way it is.’ No, it’s not; it can be something different.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on John 6:1-21: “In Islam, the pilgrim or believer is often imagined as a bird with two wings: one of the wings is fear, one of the wings is fear. In order to make her journey through life, the believer must hold these two in tension.”
The Rev. Candy Snively discusses Ephesians 2:11-22 and the dividing walls of “hostility between us.”
The Rev. Adrienne Koch reflects on Mark 6:14-29: “Have you ever had that feeling that you missed an opportunity to really get to know someone because all you could see in them was a ghost from your past? Maybe it was your first date after a breakup or divorce […] Maybe it was right after you moved to a new place, looking to make friends […] Sometimes, we think we already know who someone is.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista considers Mark 6:1-13: “What kind of person is a prophet? Abraham Heschel had something to say about that… He describes a prophet as a person concerned with God’s involvement not just in the big events but in the particular circumstances of day-to-day existence.”
Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Church is not the place you come to, it’s the place you you go from.” … As we go from here today, what is it that we bring – to a world surrounding us right now that seems to be filled with violence, hatred, conflict, bullying, racism, condescending of other people, personal attacks on people – it’s the world that we go out into….
The Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista discusses Paul’s radical message to a community in conflict (2 Corinthians 6:1-13): “The great hope of the Christian faith, the scandalous thing about it, the most daring thing it offers, is that the past does not have to determine our future. Our scandalous hope is that God will not judge us by our worst moment or by the popular opinion poll of our potential… Will we treat people according to society’s worst assumptions of who they are, or will we treat them exactly as we ourselves have been treated by God?”
The Rt. Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple visits St. Paul’s and reflects on spiritual growth (Mark 4:26-34): “If you’re a good farmer, you don’t just think about the harvest this summer, you think about what you’re doing to get ready for the next season, and the next, and all the seasons to come.”
The Rev. Adrienne Koch reflects on Mark 3:20-35: “Most folks prefer their chosen family over the one that they’ve been given. ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ This is the question Jesus asks in today’s Gospel reading.”
The Rev. George Adamik considers today’s Gospel reading (Mark 2:23-3:6) and the message of Pentecost: “We all speak different languages when it comes to this experience of faith. How do we continue to be a Pentecost, how do we continue to be reborn anew as we reach beyond our world, not to speak our language but to speak the languages of those who perhaps can understand us in new ways? We can only do that by coming to know this world beyond us.”