The way of imagination

  Texts: Dt. 34.1-12; Ps. 90.1-17; Hebrews 11      Over the past few years, I’ve done quite a bit of hiking, in all types of conditions, from the sweltering summer heat to the bone-chilling temperatures of late January.   I get a kick out of being outside with friends, toiling to the top of a mountain, taking in the view and then hurrying down and driving off to a good restaurant.   Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.   In today’s first reading, we see Moses undertake one last hike – to experience his ultimate “mountaintop moment”.     And what a moment it must have been.   There’s Moses – alone at the summit of Mt. Nebo, on the eastern side of the Jordan River.   What does he see as he looks to the West, and the South, and the North?   He beholds – somehow – “the whole land”, he even glimpses the waves of the Mediterranean (the “Western sea”) lapping against the coastline of what we now call Gaza.   ...

  Texts: Jonah 1; Psalm 69; Gospel of Mark 4.35-41; 5.1-13      Have you ever felt that your life was completely out of control, out of your control?   Have you ever experienced chaos – in your family, in your workplace…in your church?   When relationships fall apart, when we find ourselves working in a toxic environment, when our church becomes a battlefield – these are all instances of chaos wreaking havoc in our lives.   But chaos is not always a bad thing – there’s a saying that goes like this: “Some storms don’t come to destroy you; they come to clear your path”. We could even think of life as a dance between order and chaos.   When things are out of control, and we don’t know which way is up, we need some calm, some peace.   However, when things are too calm, we get stuck , and we are perhaps in need of some chaos to get us moving again in a fruitful direction.      When chaos clears your path.   T...

       Hello fellow saints; hi fellow sinners!   As we saw last time, most of the members of the people of God at the time of Jesus didn’t consider themselves to be “bad sinners”; the really bad “sinners” were the tax collectors and the prostitutes.   Most people probably thought that they were doing pretty well.   Also, sickness was often interpreted as a sign that the afflicted person was a worse sinner than healthy people.      Along with exorcisms and healings, there is another predominant theme in the first two chapters of Mark’s Gospel – the forgiveness of sins.   This had been the essence of John the Baptist’s message – repentance and forgiveness (1.4-5).   Whether John’s preaching was the catalyst of what Mark describes as a national movement of repentance, or whether John simply provided the means for the people to give expression to their repentance (by baptism), the beginning of Mark’s narrative portrays...

  “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.    And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  And immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Mk. 1.16-18)        As we saw last time, Jesus proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God.   He also made the kingdom of God tangible through his actions.   As Mark tells his story of Jesus, we see a Jesus who is on the move, who is in a hurry to establish the kingdom of God before the forces of darkness catch up with him.        Following his public “unveiling” as the Son of God and his 40-day trial in the wilderness, the King of Israel began to tour his kingdom and to gather a group of apprentices (i.e., disciples) who would learn his ways and partner with him in his mission.   Jesus had a home in Capernaum (cf. Mk. 2.1; 3.19-20), an...