Saturday, January 30, 2010
In one of the most powerful parables, Nathan gets David to admit that someone who has everything will be punished (David says by death) for unlawfully taking the “little lamb” of a poor man
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Friday, January 29, 2010
Today we hear the terrible sin of David, not only the adultery with Bathsheba but the deliberate setting up her husband either to take the credit for her pregnancy ( he, honoring the abstinence of his soldiers, refuses to lie with her), or to be stationed at the front line of battle.
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Thursday, January 28, 2010
When the victorious army returns, the women sing about Saul’s killing thousands but David’s killing ten thousand Philistines. Saul is angry and “eyed David from that day on.”
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
We are just beginning chapter 3 in this gospel, the first penned, and already Jesus has aroused the rage of the religious leaders who looked “to destroy him.” What was his sin? Healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Although the psalm is usually chosen to respond to the first reading, today the choosing and anointing of David, the least of Jesse’s eight sons, returns in the gospel. Jesus likens his action of relativizing the law to David’s, who fed his hungry men with bread from God’s sanctuary.
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Monday, January 25, 2010
The wedding theme continues in the gospel when Jesus tells his friends that no one fasts with the bridegroom present. He and they will soon be new wine—and in abundance!
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Sunday, January 24, 2010
With Jesus’ baptism, our pastor tells us, Christmas season is over. The baby has grown into the man on mission.
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
In his grief over the death of Saul and Jonathan, David tears his clothes and repeats three times: How the mighty have fallen!
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Friday, January 22, 2010
Today Jesus chooses Twelve, “whom he named apostles to be with him and to be sent out [apostellein] for a two-fold task: to proclaim good news and cast out demons
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
When the victorious army returns, the women sing about Saul’s killing thousands but David’s killing ten thousand Philistines. Saul is angry and “eyed David from that day o
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
We are just beginning chapter 3 in this gospel, the first penned, and already Jesus has aroused the rage of the religious leaders who looked “to destroy him.”
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Although the psalm is usually chosen to respond to the first reading, today the choosing and anointing of David, the least of Jesse’s eight sons, returns in the gospel
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Monday, January 18, 2010
The wedding theme continues in the gospel when Jesus tells his friends that no one fasts with the bridegroom present. He and they will soon be new wine—and in abundance
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
With Jesus’ baptism, our pastor tells us, Christmas season is over. The baby has grown into the man on mission.
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Saturday, January 16, 2010
It is God who chooses Saul as Israel’s first king, a tall and handsome man whom we will learn later is moody and even vicious. Yet Samuel tells him, “The Lord has anointed you…”
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Friday, January 15, 2010
Today we hear Israel clamoring for a king so that they might be like other nations. God says: “They have rejected me from being king over them.” God, through Samuel, warns the people that their sons will be fodder for the war machine, their daughters enslaved to work for the king.
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
What folly! To think God does battle! At first Israel’s enemy is frightened when Israel brings the Ark of the Covenant into their military camp. These Philistines knew that God had struck down the Egyptians to set this people free, but decide to fight anyway.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Today we have the famous threefold call of God to Samuel, just a boy. Eli instructs him to respond: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Hannah’s weeping continues today, so dramatically that the priest Eli believes she is drunk. Hannah responds, “I am a woman deeply troubled…I have been pouring out my heart before the Lord…I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.”
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Hannah’s weeping continues today, so dramatically that the priest Eli believes she is drunk. Hannah responds, “I am a woman deeply troubled…I have been pouring out my heart before the Lord…I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time."
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Monday, January 11, 2010
Today we begin a continuous reading of Mark’s gospel, the opening of Jesus’ ministry. Paralleling that, we have a fairly continuous reading of Samuel’s growth in wisdom, age and grace, which prepares him for his ministry as the last judge of Israel and its first prophet.
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Sunday, January 10, 2010
Just as every Eucharist celebrates and makes present the dying and rising of Christ, so every moment of Christian life, thanks to our baptism, reveals the Beloved. Christmas continues day after day, grace upon grace.
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Saturday, January 9, 2010
John’s gospel stated Jesus’ mission in a Christmas gospel: John 1:14-18. A recap: The Word was sent to become flesh and pitch his tent. Law came through Moses but grace and truth came and keep coming through Jesus, grace upon grace upon grace
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Saturday, January 9, 2010
John’s gospel stated Jesus’ mission in a Christmas gospel: John 1:14-18. A recap: The Word was sent to become flesh and pitch his tent. Law came through Moses but grace and truth came and keep coming through Jesus, grace upon grace upon grace.
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Friday, January 8, 2010
John writes of life, God’s life within us. God’s life is in the Son and “whoever has the Son has life.” Luke shows that Jesus’ mission is his choice in this healing of a leper.
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Tuesday, January 5, 2010
What wonderful news! It is not that we love God, but that God first loves us. God loves us (and as Paul would say, even while we were sinners and enemies of God) first and always
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Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The reason we “ought to love one another” is precisely because God loves us so much. “God lives in us,” John asserts. Jesus’ mission in this piece of Mark’s gospel includes solitary prayer and another proclamatio
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Monday, January 4, 2010
This week we will hear Jesus’ mission statements from all four gospels. John will be warning about antichrists in his first letter, so it is good to know the real Christ and how he operates in order to choose him and not be blindsided by a poseur.
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Sunday, January 3, 2010
How well we know the story of the wisemen’s coming, and perhaps even know the melody of the first reading, according to Handel’s Messiah. Messiah means anointed, and Psalm 72 which we will use much of this week as a response is praise of God’s anointed, Jesus
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Saturday, January 2, 2009
All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God and each of us has abiding within us the anointing. Anointing is another name for the Holy Spirit.
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Friday, January 1, 2010
This day has served as the feast of Jesus’ circumcision and New Year’s Day in the western world. Jesus begins his life as a Jewish child, subject to the law but one of the blessed. That blessing is extended now not only to Jews, but to all people, all nations, east and west.
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