~ John 9:1-41 ~ As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in … Read More
~ John 3:14-21/Psalm 121 ~ The Gospel of John is an enigma. It contains some of the best known stories in all the bible, such as the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well and the healing of the blind man. And some very well known phrases, such as … Read More
~ Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 ~ As a child growing up in church, hearing the creation stories, I pretty much heard them as true stories. You might say, as Marcus Borg puts it, I heard them in my “precritical naïveté” stage of life. I had no reason to believe that the … Read More
Ash Wednesday Meditation Joel 2:1-2, 12-17/ Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 I remember as a child on a certain day in February seeing people about town with black smudge marks on their foreheads. When I dared looked closer I saw that these black smudge marks were in the shape of a cross. … Read More
Matthew 6:24-34 A very familiar phrase found in what is traditionally called “The Lord’s Prayer” is “give us this day our daily bread.” Here at Noe Valley Ministry we refer to it as the “Prayer of Jesus.” In the version we’ve been reciting recently, a translation by the Quaker writer, … Read More
~ Matthew 5:38-48/Leviticus 19:18/Deuteronomy 19:16-21 ~ My sermon title today can be said in two different ways. One is as a prayer: “Jesus, this is really hard to do.” The second is, if you will, as a profane exclamation: “Jesus, this is really hard to do!” For here we have … Read More