It is early in the afternoon. I am visiting a parishioner in the hospital.
It is tempting when one has never been the victim of vicious violence or terrible injustice, to fall prey to the romantic notion that suffering inevitably ennobles the soul. It is not always so.
The healed invalid in John 5:1-18 reminds me of Jonah. Jonah, was miraculously delivered by God, but he was not transformed. At the end of the book Jonah remained as vengeful, resentful, and xenophobic as he was at the beginning of the story.
An excellent homily was preached at the opening Eucharist of our Diocesan Clergy Day this morning.
Spending the day with Professor Pamela Klassen and fifty Diocese of BC Clergy at a “Clergy Day”.
It is that time of year again. Many organizations are preparing for annual meetings. The past year’s performance is being reviewed, numbers crunched, budgets prepared, visions for the future proposed.
Every once in a while as a preacher, I receive a response to my sermon that stands out as particularly gratifying.
The story of Jesus healing an valid in John 5:1-18 is not a pleasant story.
I have been thinking about hurt – not the hurt in my knee that is my faithful companion these days, but the more vague, unfocused, psychic emotional pain that grinds somewhere between my head and my gut. This is the hurt I can carry for years. It is the hurt that can poison every hour of my day. It almost always relates to people.
Recently, in reference to Jesus’ words in John 4:34-38, I wrote that the task of the Christian life is not so much to exert our will to bring it into conformity with God’s will as it is to find where the Spirit of God is at work and enter into that work in cooperation with the flow of God’s Spirit. This is easy to say, harder to do.
