john on Violence

Risen Christ, The world despised and rejected you You responded with grace, humility, and welcome The proud questioned your power, devised your death You responded with peace, forgiveness, and new lif...

Preaching Commentary Earthquakes & Cosmic Animation In Matthew 27:51, we read of an earthquake that occurred the moment Jesus breathed his last breath. Matthew wants us to note that the followi...

In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely ...

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. All: Thanks be to God.

We gather today to remember To hear again the story of God’s suffering To hear the cry of our lives echoed on Jesus’ lips: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? We gather today to remember That ...

The season which Engages the whole World in a Conspiracy of love.

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.

In this dark time of year, God, we long for your coming. When darkness falls upon the world, we long for your peace. For healing, we wait. For justice, we hope. Strengthen our hearts, that we may be s...

Beloved of God, go now in peace to love and to serve, with the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

For those who first went out into the early dawn, when the sky was grey, taking spices to the tomb, there was terror, and surprise. For us, resisting the impulse to sleep in as part of a long weekend,...

Holy Trinity, Community of Love, Draw us together in your creative light Root us in the ground of your being, Vulnerable before one another, Unashamed in your presence and each other’s Make us joyfu...

Earthquakes & Cosmic Animation In Matthew 27:51, we read of an earthquake that occurred the moment Jesus breathed his last breath. Matthew wants us to note that the following chain of events (inc...

Gracious God, we confess that we think of Easter as the springtime holiday rather than the mystery holiday, the hope-time holiday, the now-its-up-to-us holiday. We’re more at home with bulbs and bunni...

Sigmund Freud tells the story of a three-year-old boy crying in a dark room of a home he was visiting one evening. “Auntie,” the boy cried, “talk to me! I’m frightened because it is so dark.” His aunt...

The great pattern of life is the ecstasy and intimacy of God, who went out of the self to the extreme point, and so dwells among us in an intimacy we can hardly imagine.

Preaching Summary An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.”  The suggestion i...

The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, the distributive property...

preaching commentary The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, th...

Glory to you, O Christ Triumphant over death and injustice Victorious over fear and shame Glory to you, O Christ New life overflows Salvation reigns Glory to you, O Christ We proclaim you risen, jus...

Pastor: As Christ’s Church here on earth, we are invited to be a part of a bigger story, welcomed as members of a larger community, and called to a greater mission.  In humble repentance we must ack...

Gracious God, through that Easter morning, you changed everything. Yet we don’t change the way we live. You have freed us from sin and death, yet we daily choose to distance ourselves from you and to ...

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every oth...

Almighty God, who by the death of your Son has destroyed sin and death, and by his resurrection has restored innocence and everlasting life in order that, deliv­ered from the power of sin, we may live...

Leader: We worship in the name of God the Father: People: who, through Christ, has chosen us and blessed us with every spiritual blessing that heaven has to offer. Leader: And of the ...

Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls.

God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit–You know what it’s like to be many and one at the same time. In You, we too are many ... yet one. You’ve made us one body—a single family unified for one purpose; with ...

Pastor: Go now, as God’s children, chosen and dearly loved, to bear fruit for His Kingdom – fruit that will last.  May the almighty and merciful Lord, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, bless...

As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously.