Prairie Musings

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.” Some of you may have seen the 2006 movie Amazing Grace , which tells the story of William Wilberforce’s twenty-year effort to abolish the slave trade in England and all British colonies. This song, and its author, John Newton, play a key role in the movie, and in Wilberforce’s life. At the end of his life, John Newton was a blind Anglican priest—at the beginning of his life, he was captain of a slave ship. He wrote this hymn, perhaps the most well-known hymn across all of Christianity, as part of his confession. In a pamphlet he sent to every member of Parliament, he apologized that it was “a confession, which ... comes too late ... It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see. Today’s Gosp...

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? It was the day before Easter last year. A car of grad students was pulled over in New Jersey for a routine traffic stop, and the police found that the registration had expired and the driver did not have insurance. So, they impounded the car, and one of the kids called her mother to come get them. “Do you know who I am?” the mother shouted at the officers multiple times when she arrived. As her arrogant, expletive-laden, 15-minute, abusive rant went viral on the internet, it cost the mother her job as a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—a seven billion dollar agency. She had to resign in shame a few days later. “Do you know who I am?” We hear Jesus warning us about this attitude of self-centered privilege and self-righteousness in today’s reading from Luke. Jesus is at a banquet, and he has a message for both the guests and the host. “Guests,” he says, “don’t come in and take the seats of honor—you might find yourself saying “...

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29) The parable of the Good Samaritan…possibly the best known story Jesus told. A man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and Jesus asks him what the Bible says. He responds, correctly, with what Jesus has given as the summary of all the law: love God, love your neighbor. But this is too open-ended for the questioner; he wants a boundary, a border…a fence…so that he can justify himself, secure in the knowledge that he only has to love as a neighbor those on the inside. Anyone outside the boundary, he’s off the hook—no need to love them, they’re not his neighbor. Jesus, as he always does when someone wants to know the limits of God’s love, or the limits of our responsibility, replies with a story. When we want something cut and dried, a contract we can use to prove we’ve done enough, Jesus always responds with a story. Stories have great power to indict and inspire u...

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [all people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...” The Declaration of Independence…you’ve all seen a reproduction of it, right? Remember the giant signature at the bottom, John Hancock’s? Legend has it that he wrote it bigger than anyone else’s so that King George could see it without his reading glasses. Paul does the same thing in today’s reading; he says: “See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!” Paul wants his readers to know that what he’s saying was so important that he isn’t doing the typical practice of having someone transcribe his words on paper for him—he’s writing it down himself, and in really big letters! This reading is from the end of Paul’s ...

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid (Easter 6C, John 14:23-29).  The peace of the Lord be always with you…[“And also with you.”] We say this every week, don’t we? Do you remember where exactly in the liturgy this happens?...Right at the beginning of the service of Holy Communion. Right at the start of the celebration of the Sacrament of Christ’s on-going presence. Jesus promises us his presence in today’s Gospel reading, and he promises to send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach us and remind of what Jesus has said to us. What is it that Jesus has said to us? One of the first things that comes to mind is Jesus’ summary of the law: “love God, love your neighbor as yourself.” The second thing might be what we call the Great Commission: “Go to all the world, making disciples and teaching.” But you know, based on number of occurrences, can you guess, t...

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35).   (Easter 5C: Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35) This is an emotional weekend for me: my middle son, Joey, is graduating from high school, and those of you who know me well will not be surprised to find that at any given moment you’ll see me breaking into tears of joy because I'm so proud of him, or tears of excitement because I'm so happy for his next step in life at Doane University this fall, or tears of despair because he'll be moving away to his dorm room and I'll miss him so...SO…this weekend my brain is overflowing with all the great memories of Joey throughout the years. Like many kids, Joey loved bugs and spiders when he was younger. For his 5 th birthday, he got a bug science kit that included these great, giant, green ...

He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces….But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. This reading from Isaiah, the Suffering Servant hymn, is found in the Good Friday liturgy in the earliest known lectionary, from the 5th century. It draws parallels between Jesus and the annual Day of Atonement ritual in ancient Israel. This was (and still is) the holiest day of the year for Jews, the day when the High Priest would take two goats, sacrificing one on the altar, and putting his hands on the head of the other to lay on it the collective sins of the community, then releasing it into the wilderness, where it would carry off the sins, neither the goat nor the sins to ever be seen again: God had put the sins of the people away, cast them out. If you ask the average American Christian o...