A Fresh Perspective

Fr Richard Rohr shares a fascinating story he learned from a seasoned African missionary. When the priest first arrived in an African village he began by celebrating the Eucharist in a simple manner. He said to the people, “Now I’m going to celebrate a very simple means of sharing God’s love with you. Those of you who want to join in this meal are entering into God’s love.” Then he held out the bread to them and said, “Whoever eats this bread believes that your people are one people.” He explained to them the implication of this simple gospel, “That means you can’t hate one another anymore.” That’s how he shared the gospel. Unknowingly, the priest had violated a custom of the tribe; namely, the men ate together, while the women and children ate separately. It was a disgrace for a man to eat with a woman. Unwittingly, the priest had gathered men and women around the sacred table and fed the bread to men and women as equals. This disturbed them, and the natives reacted quite vocally...

They shall call him Emmanuel, which means, God with us. Christians of different traditions may utilize different images and words to talk about how Jesus incarnates the Divine, but all of us see in Jesus a representative of God with us. When I look at Jesus I see a special revelation of the goodness and grace of God, whose life and teachings serve as a guide for my life and as a means of liberation. Let’s talk first about God as Emmanuel being our guide. Joseph is not a dominant figure in the birth stories, but here, in the way he responds to Mary’s pregnancy Joseph functions as a kind of model for all of us.   What do I mean? Consider how Joseph responded when he discovered that the wife he was pledged too was pregnant, and of course he assumed she was pregnant by another man. He assumed that she had been unfaithful. The text says that Joseph “being a righteous man (or just man) and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Matthew says...

Some of us who have been following the tweets of Bana Alabed, a seven year old Syrian girl living in Aleppo, have been emotionally impacted by the ravages of war as told by a child. Late last Sunday night she tweeted that her house had been bombed. She said, “Tonight we have no house, it’s bombed and I got in rubble. I saw deaths and I almost died.” On Monday her mother posted an update that her family was on the run. What is their chance of survival? Not very good. When we hear and see these first-hand accounts of the devastation and deaths caused by war we realize how broken our world is. On this second Sunday of Advent we pray for and hopefully will commit ourselves anew to work for peace. Our scripture text today from Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks to this longing for peace. Prior to this passage Paul has been dealing with tensions in the fellowship, offering instruction on how these tensions should be resolved. Hear once again he urges them to live in harmony with one an...

This text in Matthew is a text I remember from the days I clutched a Scofield reference Bible. Along with Scofield’s infallible notes I carried around a copy of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, you know, the premier text on the future of the world. He called it the late great planet earth because he believed that the earth was headed toward Armageddon, which would culminate in the Second Coming of Christ.  He also believed, as was taught in the notes of the Scofield reference Bible, that the church would be raptured (not ruptured, the church has been continuously ruptured, but raptured) – that is, snatched away, evacuated into heaven before the tribulation and suffering that would engulf the earth. This view originated in Europe by a man named John Nelson Darby who later brought it to America, where it was spread through the preaching of popular American evangelists. It offered the kind of sensationalism many evangelists crave. It should come as no surprise that this was...

We have two different end time visions here – one in Isaiah and the other in Luke. Before I preach these texts, before I draw spiritual truths from them, I need to say a word about them, particularly the text in Luke 21. First, when the biblical writers talk about the last days of the end-time, the end they are talking about is not the end of everything; they are not talking about the end of the earth. They are talking about the end of the present age, which they believed would usher in a new age, an age of healing and renewal, an age of peace and justice, not somewhere else, but on this earth.  So the end is not the end of the earth, but the end of this present age, and the beginning of a new age on this earth. Thus the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer: Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Second, the text in Luke 21 is extremely difficult to interpret from a historical perspective, and biblical scholarship is divided on it. As I have said many times before, Gospel st...

Sara Miles, in her spiritual memoir titled, Take this Bread , explains how she came to faith. She was raised an atheist, but for some reason wandered into an Episcopal church one day in San Francisco, where everyone was welcomed and encouraged to take Communion. So she ate the bread and drank the wine and found that it somehow nourished her soul and quenched her thirst. She kept going back and grew into a disciple of Jesus.   Being in California , she discovered that they had access to inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables. So on Fridays, she started a food pantry – right in the middle of their beautiful Sanctuary. All are welcome. There are no forms to fill out. People come and choose what they want. The down-and-out, the addicted, the messed up, the homeless, all are welcome and all are treated with dignity. Sara and the other volunteers pray with those who want prayer, they listen and bless those who need a blessing. And those who come are considered part of their church ...