When Paul wrote to the christians of Philippi, he included this passage: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Holy Week begins next week, with Palm Sunday. Holy…
You can’t hurry love – sermon for 4 Lent 2019
Jesus tells us a lot of parables. A parable is a kind of story, a kind of fable or myth, or perhaps an anecdote, or a little sketch of a fictional setting that reveals a basic truth. Or sometimes it doesn’t reveal a basic truth. We’re told in the scripture that his own disciples often…
Why did Christ die?
Christ did not die on the cross in order to please an angry God. Christ was the visible part of an act of sacrifice in which the whole Trinity participated. In the Paschal mystery, the whole Trinity acts in union (as it always wills as one), to repair the damaged creation. Yes, his death was…
On Holy Week, moods, and the whiplash of Palm Sunday
I’ve been reading more today about people who are planning to move the Passion gospel to the end of the liturgy on Palm Sunday, or even to drop it altogether and only read it on Good Friday. The reasons seem to be 2 in number: “let people have one Sunday where they feel good!”, and…
God is not punishing you – sermon for 3 Lent 2019
Here’s today’s sermon in a nutshell: bad things happen, but they don’t happen because God is punishing you. I’m being really blunt about the whole point of the sermon because some of us carry this notion around in our heads, or some variation of it, and it’s toxic. It’s not good. {you might want to…