good friday on Selfishness

Gracious God, you freely embraced death for us. Every day we choose our own will. We choose not to die to ourselves for you. We take the gift you gave us and squander it. Please give us the courage ...

Lord of Hosts, We come before you today in a tone of solemnity. We recognize that while it was Judas who betrayed you for 30 pieces of silver, that we often betray you as well. We know what is right,...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the reality of what it means to “take up our cross” in our daily lives: Sometimes we suffer u...

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. O Christ, in your humility, your lonely struggle and your agony, you share our suffering. Give us faith to trust your grace....

Leader: Since we have a great high priest who can sympathize with our weakness, let us boldly approach the throne of grace, confident that there we will receive God’s mercy and grace in our time of ne...

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity that the term stigma originated with the ancient Greeks, roughly during Jesus’ tim...

Leader: Blessed Lord Jesus, before your cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused you to be made a curse, the evil that provokes divine wrath. All: Show me the enormit...

Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

“Dear friends, Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God…. This is love: Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his So...

Leader: For him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. People: For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the u...

God of mercy, deliver us from our fear in which we judge others. We pray for all who are oppressed, imprisoned, persecuted or rejected. To you who have delivered us from slavery we pray for the faith ...

Take up your cross and follow Jesus the Messiah, who suffered and died that we might share in his resurrection life and have no shame when he comes again in the glory of his Father. Amen.

Though Christ was by nature divine, Christ did not cling to equality with God, but in utter self-emptying, took the form of a slave, and was born as a human. God have mercy. Appearing in h...

The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...

In Elie Wiesel’s Night , Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressi...

Preaching Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Israel’s State of Mind The Book of Isaiah is a remarkable accounting of the history of the relationship people o...

In George Bernard Shaw’s play about Joan of Arc , as Joan faces her execution by burning, she addresses those in power who have condemned her: “I will now go to the common people and find comfort in ...

What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey relief that the work week i...

Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...

Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Israel’s State of Mind The Book of Isaiah is a remarkable accounting of the history of the relationship people of Israel with God. By t...

May Jesus Christ, who for our sake became obedient unto death, even death on a cross, keep you and strengthen you. Amen.

Ancient Lens What Can We Learn From the Historical Context? Old and New Testaments Meet Hebrews is a rich tapestry of intricately woven theology that spans the Old and New Testaments. With Christ...

It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate Son of God, that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life…my reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by h...

Preaching Commentary Introduction The lectionary text from John is an exceedingly long passage, but covers the main events that we commemorate on Good Friday. For that reason, I am going to break u...

The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christians stubbornly refused, in spite of the ridicule, to discard it in favour of something less offensive, can have only one explanation....

Ancient Lens What Can We Learn From the Historical Context? Old and New Testaments Meet Hebrews is a rich tapestry of intricately woven theology that spans the Old and New Testaments. With Christ...

God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our...