Prairie Musings

Proper 9B, Mark 6:1-13 "And Jesus was astounded at their lack of faith." When was the last time you were astonished? I mean really astonished? Maybe it will help you answer my question to think about astonishment compared to things like wonder and surprise and amazement . You might wonder about something you don’t quite yet understand, or you might see a wonder of nature while your on vacation. Wonder is not all that far out of the ordinary, really. You are surprised at something you didn’t expect—a birthday party, someone jumping out and yelling “boo!” You are momentarily surprised, and then things are back to normal. You are amazed —your thoughts literally caught in a tangle, a maze, when you see or hear something that just doesn’t make sense. All of those things happen pretty regularly for me…but astonishment? Literally, the root of the word astonishment means thunderstruck —“out of a clap of thunder.” So, when was the last time you were thunderstruck…so shocked by som...

Proper 7B: 1 Sam 17:32-49, Psalm 9:9-20, 2 Cor 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41 Lectionary Page Here But David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts…” (1 Samuel 17:45a) Ann, Ann, Ardie, Barb, Barb, Barbara, Becky, Bill, Bob, Bobby, Carol, Claudianna, Connie, Dan, Debbie, Denise, Doug, Doug, Erin, Gayle, George, Gina, Harry, Ibby, Jan, Jeanne, Jennifer, Jessica, John, Judi, Julie, Kathy, Kris, Kris, Lana, Lauri, Linda, Linda, Lisa, Luann, Matt, Michael, Michelle, Nancy, Nola, Pam, Pat, Patrice, Patrice, Patti, Peggy, Phyllis, Rob, Rosey, Sam, Sandra, Sandra, Sandy, Sandy, Sarah, Sooz, Sue, Susan, Terry, Vivienne , Will. (And I’m sure I have left some people out, so I apologize for that.) These people are part of a modern-day David-and-Goliath story. The ancient David went out to do battle with Goliath, the seemingly unconquerable, brutal, powerful giant, and toppled him with just a few small stones he put into ...

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey God’s commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey God’s commandments. And God’s commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.  (1 John 5:2-4a) Easter 6B readings Love, love, love. dah dah dah, love, love, love….All you need is…Love. All you need is Love…My hope is to have you leaving worship today with that earworm stuck in your head! Because the lectionary for this year has assigned the First Letter of John, we’ve been talking for weeks about love. This week John switches it up a little bit, though, and give us two other repeating words in addition to the word love : commandments , and obey . Those don’t sound quite as warm and fuzzy. John says loving God means obeying God’s commandments. Obeying God’s commandments is the topic of the book What if Jesus Was Serious that our confirmation class is reading right now. The author, Skye Jethani, compares Jesus’ t...

Like many of you, I’m sure, I held my breath this past week when reports of a shooting at Westroads started coming across my social media, remembering that traumatic and tragic December day in 2007, praying this was not a repeat. Just a few days earlier, I held my breath as we awaited details on the shooting at the FedEx facility in my home town, Indianapolis, since I have friends and friends’ children who work there. This week, like many of you, I held my breath and waited with anxiety and sadness for the verdict from the jury in Minneapolis deciding the case of Derek Chauvin. We are a nation obsessed with, infected with, violence. Surely we need to find new and viable ways to address the racism that is still so obviously and painfully present throughout our society, the hopelessness and voicelessness that so many feel. And, just as surely our police and first responders have a difficult and dangerous job—we send them running in where we ourselves choose to run away. But perhaps tha...

 See what love God has given us, that we should be called Children of God; and that is what we are (1 John 3:1a). Easter 3B, 1 John 3:1-7 There’s this really great advertisement I saw on the History Channel for its series called “Vikings” that shows a pudgy, balding, middle-aged man running out to his mailbox day after day, disappointed that something—we’re not sure what—hasn’t arrived. Finally, the envelope he’s been waiting for shows up—it’s the results of a DNA ancestry test. He rips it open, scans the results with disappointment, but then, at the very bottom of the page, he sees it—0.012% Viking. Suddenly he jumps up, he screams, and he’s transformed into a fur-robed, sword-wielding warrior. He knew it all along—he’s a Viking.  According to recent estimates, 26 million people have purchased one of those genetic ancestry testing kits. The journal “New Genetics and Society” recently published an extensive study based on interviews with Swedish, British and American individ...

God’s folly is wiser than humans, you see, and God’s weakness is stronger than humans. Think back to your own call, my brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise in human terms. Not many of you were powerful. Not many were nobly born. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong; God chose the insignificant and despised things of the world—yes, even things that don’t exist!—to abolish the power of the things that do exist (1 Cor 1:25-28, NT Wright). This passage, from the first chapter of First Corinthians, is the first passage of the Bible I ever remember encountering outside of church. I was in fifth or sixth grade, and I was reading Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time . It has been my favorite passage of Scripture ever since. L’Engle was an atheist who became an Episcopalian with a daily practice of reading Scripture and praying. She wrote more than 60 books, many of them theological or spiritual,...

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:19-21). We’re pretty good, it seems, at storing things up…Last year we paid the US storage unit industry $40 billion so we could put our stuff into more than 2 billion square feet of storage floor space. Jesus, I think, has some words for us. These clothes that no longer fit and pieces of furniture and china from the previous generations and rusting exercise bikes and treadmills sit in their climate-controlled, dark, and silent cells, waiting for the day when they’ll finally be buried in the landfill, or maybe given to GoodWill.  For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also. We’ve all been storing up in other areas of our lives during this past pandemic yea...