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And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[e] with whom I am well pleased.”

The sacred myth tells us that Jesus rose from death after three days – what transformation happened in that tomb? Jim Burklo connects the story with our gestation of fear into faith, victimhood into victory, harmful theology into healthy spirituality.

Resurrection is not about the physical resuscitation of a corpse. Resurrection is about the wisdom and the courage to proclaim with our lives that Jesus’ vision of the Reign of LOVE continues to rise in us.

In the midst of the chaos, which is Ukraine, Father Stephan spoke about life. Five funerals yesterday, a wedding and a baptism this morning. Father Stephan is from Kiev, where he hopes to return soon.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus did to deserve being tortured and crucified to death? How could someone so good be treated so inhumanely?

    In the wilderness of these days, I find myself tempted to retreat from the world around me. The pandemic has trained me too well in the arts of isolation. Hunkering down in the safety of my …

I wonder what the numerous losses our world has experienced in the past two years may have liberated us from. What joys may we discover in this liberation? In the freedom from the way things were? In the discovery of stars to guide us? In the joy we allow ourselves to take in each new birth.

I used to think that the end of the world would come in a blaze of glory. I used to think that when the world ended there would be plenty of warning. I used to think that if you paid enough attention to what was going on around you, you would be able to tell when the world was going to end.

Excuse me if I sound a little too indignant but jockeying for a seat during a global pandemic is more than a little tone deaf, when according to the United Nations, yet another 150 million or so people will be plunged into poverty this year, swelling the ranks of the global poor to over one and a half-billion people, over half of which are children.

I believe that God’s love undergirds creation and is at work always in our world, sometimes despite the seeming evidence to the contrary. And I believe that God’s love is for everyone – it is indeed the bread of life, no matter what symbols or metaphors we use.

1st  Corinthians chapter 13. Danna recited it from a brand-spanking new translation of the Bible; you may remember, if you are of a certain age, it was called “Good News for Modern Man:”

We can no longer deny that the seeds of racism and hatred are growing at a pace which threatens to choke our long-ago dreams of a multicultural paradise.

While he was dying of cancer, American poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, penned a poem which, although it is but a fragment of a poem, it has the power to move me into the deepest part of my very self. This poem would eventually be titled, “Late Fragment”

“The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want” or,“A song for LOVE’s sake: When our LOVE’s the guide by-my-side, I want for nothing.”

The translations of this ancient Hebrew hymn may be separated by centuries, but both the English translators of King James and the American Rabbi Jamie Arnold seek to move us deeply into the inner workings of our being.

From within this pandemic wilderness of Lent, we must prepare ourselves to enter our second Holy Week in lockdown. At a time, when so much of our focus revolves around the hope generated by the arrival of vaccines, it occurs to me that we would do well to remember to vaccinate ourselves against more than just COVID.

Before we can move on, though, we need to be honest with ourselves. Before we can get to the prayer, “Create in me a clean heart” (51.10), we have to face our sins. Saying, “Create in me a clean heart,” reflects an inner desire for God’s purification. The words are a confession of our need for change. It’s so easy to point to the killer, the public official who said the wrong words, the rioters at the Capitol, the conspiracy theorists, and the anti-vaxxers. We say, They’re the ones with a problem. They are the hateful ones. Not me.

The following church service was conducted by George Stuart at Toronto New South Wales in Australia March 2021.

It may seem ludicrous for this “progressive preacher” to find herself tempted to pray for a miracle. But the region in which I live has been under a strict stay-at-home order since Boxing Day. So, right about now I sure could use some sort of miracle to occur which would release us all from this COVID enforced lockdown.