One of the blessings of the Sacred Ground program that we have begun this fall is that it is inviting us to behold, acknowledge, and critically evaluate some of the attitudes and ideals that have been “hardwired” into our American DNA.  One of them is our dogged sense of independence, and the ethos of “rugged individualism” that motivated the growth of our country. 

This Sunday after church, I will be heading off to Burning Man to join with about 70,000 adventuresome souls to form a temporary “city” in the heart of the Nevada Desert. It’s a community built on radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, care for the environment, radical inclusion, and the principal of immediacy, among other important defining principles.

Today, in our reading from the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus teaching in a synagogue when a woman appears “with a spirit that has debilitated her for eighteen years.” For eighteen long years she has been “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” Eighteen years, a lifetime within a lifetime. 

For the past three weeks, a good number of our parishioners have engaged in a discussion of Brian McLaren’s compelling and timely book, Do I stay Christian? In the book, McLaren addresses the deep concerns felt by many of us who wrestle with the hurt, denial, distortions and divisions that have plagued Christianity not only in recent years, but for hundreds of years.

And yet the truth is, Jesus’ very first followers were steeped in a world that was fraught with opposition and dissent.

If I were to name a theme for our gospel readings for the past few weeks, it would be “the problem with possessions.”  Last week, we heard Jesus tell the crowds that life does not consist of the “abundance of possessions.”  In our gospel reading for this week, Jesus connects the accumulation of possessions to fear and advises his disciples to let go of all that they cling to so tightly and trade their fear for faith—faith in a different kind of security other than coins in a purse or treasures in a chest. 

The Gospel reading this week is about someone asking Rabbi Jesus to make his brother divide the family inheritance. As is often the case, Jesus answers with a story.

Today week our Gospel reading from Luke about Mary and Martha is nearly as well known as the story of the Good Samaritan that we heard last week. It, too, begins quite simply: “As they continued on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomes him into her home.”

In our Gospel reading for today, we hear the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” The story is so familiar, there is even have a “Samaritan” law that limits our liability if we come to the aid of a person who has been injured in an emergency situation.

In our epistle reading for this Sunday, Paul writes with passionate fervor to the community he founded in Galatia because things are not going as smoothly there as he had hoped. He admonishes them to keep their focus on the self-offering love of Christ that united them to one another and to God in the first place, and to quit bickering over behavioral norms and legalities that divide and polarize them.

This week, members of the congregations of St. John’s and St. Peter’s have been busy preparing for our second “Annual” Juneteenth Collaboration. We are eager for this opportunity to celebrate together through song, prayer, marching, worship, fellowship, and feasting. I hope you will join us!

This Sunday we will celebrate the Trinity. It’s the only feast day that honors a doctrine, and not an event in the life of Jesus or the ministry of a saint. The Gospel passage from John that our lectionary gives us was chosen because it’s one of the few that mention all three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one place.

As I think about the challenging times and the “signs of the times” in which we live, I have been doing some looking back into years of my own life, to other challenging times and other “signs of the times.” Growing up in West Los Angeles in the 60’s and 70’s I saw some things: the Watts Riots, the years of Vietnam War protests, the hippie movement with its sit ins and “love ins”, and the “oil crises” and years of double-digit inflation.

This past week, I ran across a 2011 article from The New York Times reporting on a study of small town that bore intriguing results. San Pedro Manrique in Spain is known for its annual fire-walking ritual, which draws the entire village and spectator-tourists. Researchers were interested in exploring how people connected around community ceremonies, and whether there were any physical/biological responses to the experience.

In our assigned Psalm for this Sunday, the psalmist prays for God's blessings not just for the people of Israel, but for "all the peoples" and "all the ends of the earth." Like the people in Ukraine, I imagine. Or even closer, Buffalo, New York. The psalmist’s prayer resonates with me as a good prayer, but it also feels like a future so far off that I can’t even begin to imagine how to attain it.

Today, we read about Jesus’ last post-resurrection encounter with his disciples in the Gospel of John, a story that is fondly called, “Breakfast on the Beach.”  I love this story – there is nothing more delightful than imagining the risen Jesus preparing a barbeque on the shore for his tired and hungry friends.

I am still basking in the glow of our Easter Day service, and the joy that flowed between us as we celebrated resurrection and welcomed our newest member into the household of God through the waters of baptism.  Christ is risen indeed!

As we move through Holy Week into the threshold of Easter, I am thinking about a visit I had with an old friend one Lenten day two years ago, right before COVID-19 descended upon us. We had planned to take a walk around the University of Richmond, but right in the middle, it began to rain. So, we sheltered in a covered patio, taking a more stationary pilgrimage than we had intended, sharing instead some of the terrain we had each crossed since our last visit. In the time that had passed between that visit and this one, we both had lost marriages and buried loved ones, all before their time.