Prairie Musings

Having a hard time deciding on your Lenten discipline this year? Look no further--I have one based on teachings from the Letter of James:  Burning palms for Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness (1:19b-20)...If someone thinks he is religious yet does not bridle his tongue, and so deceives his heart, his religion is futile (1:26-27)...The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people made in God’s image. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. These things should not be so, my brothers and sisters (3:8b-10)...But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and not hypocritical. And the fruit that consists of righteousness is planted in peace among those who make peace (3:17-18). As Christians, we are commanded to lead ...

 Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God ( Luke 6:20 ). This is Super Bowl weekend…anybody join a betting pool on who’s going to win, Cincinnati or Los Angeles? This competition wouldn’t really be very interesting, would it, if there weren’t a winner and a loser? The Super Bowl is, of course, a zero-sum situation: whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other; one team’s success is possible only with the other team’s loss. One of the important underlying themes in today’s Gospel, I think, is a reminder that our lives as disciples in the grace-filled Kingdom of God are not part of a zero-sum game.  As you were just listening to the deacon read the Gospel, you might have been thinking, “Wait a minute…these Beatitudes, they don’t sound quite like the ones I remember! What about the merciful? What happened to the meek inheriting the earth?” Well, as you know, the four different Gospel writers tell their stories of Jesus to four different audiences, and...

 Now: about things relating to the spirit’s work, my brothers and sisters, I don’t want you to remain uninformed… To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ( 1 Cor 12:1, 7 ) We just finished the twelve days of Christmas, and I’m curious…did any of you re-gift anything? I did a Google search, and found several etiquette websites with articles like “Nine rules for regifting” and “The Seven Simple Rules of Regifting” and “Five Things that Are OK to Regift, and Five Things that Are Not.” All of this—and even the term re-gifting—thanks to a 1995 episode of Seinfeld. Paul in today’s reading from Corinthians is telling us that, where the works of the Spirit are concerned, a sort of holy regifting is not only OK, it’s what is actually required of us! So what is it that we are to be regifting? What is the spirit’s work? Paul’s teaching on the work of the spirit makes it clear he’s not just talking about simply “lip service” like speaking in tongues or evangelizin...

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us...(Collect for Advent III ) One of the sermon resources I used this week had this cartoon: The first panel shows someone looking up and shouting to the heavens, ‘God! If you’re up there, tell us what we should do!’ The second panel has a voice coming from the clouds, “Feed the hungry, house the homeless, establish justice.” In the third pane the person has an alarmed expression, “Just testing!” they say. Then the voice answers back, “Me too.” This Third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday—“Rejoice” Sunday. Instead of purple candles and purple vestments—reminders that Advent is sometimes called the “Little Lent”—we light the pink candle and we wear pink rose vestments. The prophet Zephaniah—usually a pretty somber, doom-and-gloom guy—today says, “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” Instead of a Psalm we read the First Song of Isaiah, “Therefore you...

 But whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many ( Mark 10:43b-45 ). “Shotgun!” My kids still sometimes yell this out as we’re heading to the car, even though they’re almost grown up. Sound familiar? Today, James and John call shotgun in Jesus’ kingdom. Like children, they ask first, “Promise us you’ll say yes to what we’re going to ask.” The truth is, I’m afraid, we’re all really not that different from these two brothers. It’s part of the human condition, it seems, to want to be the best, to be the first, to have the most, to win the trophy…and, like the other disciples in the story, to be a little angry and jealous when we don’t. “What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks James and John…”What is it you want me to do for you?” The verb want shows up many times in this part of Mark, and each time it ...

You will notice something different about our bulletins starting this week--we're not including the full text of the service, just the outline with page number references to the Book of Common Prayer that you'll find in your pews. (This was, of course, the way it was everywhere until just a few years ago when larger parishes were able to purchase business-class photocopy machines.) We're doing this for several reasons: Now that we are into a full in-person program year (yeah!), we need to refocus the time that was spent creating a full bulletin each week and re-formatting it for on-line downloading. It is also our responsibility to do all that we can to conserve and protect our natural resources--and it takes a lot of paper each week for us to print everything-paper that all ends up in the recycling bin the same day it is used. Finally, it also takes a lot of money to print all those one-time-use bulletins each week. But, for me, the most important reason is that using and ...

Proper 21B   How many of you lost something—your keys, your wallet, your cell phone, your checkbook—lost something this past month? Let’s see your hands…me, too. I had saved some coupons for getting work done on my car, and I couldn’t find them to save my life. Well, actually, I’m sure I didn’t lose them—I’m sure Lisa hid them—she does that all the time, you know… Finding what was lost, recovering it, is something we encounter frequently in our day-to-day lives. And we all have family and friends who are recovering from surgery or from an illness, who are in the hospital to be restored to health and wholeness. I mention recovery because this is the end of Recovery Month, a time to foster awareness and understanding of mental and substance use disorders and to celebrate the people who are in recovery and have escaped the grip of addiction. “Recovery” in this context is a life-long, on-going process, typically described in 12 steps. The Betty Ford Clinic defines it this way: Recovery...