Tuesday Week 29 Year II

Readings: Ephesians 2:12-22; Luke 12:35-38 Paul is falling over himself with metaphors today, mixing and matching like crazy, but all to one end: the urgent communication of a distance dwindled to nothing. In Christ, foreign has become familiar. In Christ, two become one. In Christ, distance becomes closeness; hostility, harmony; war, peace. We are now …

Friday Week 26 Year II

Readings: Job 38:1, 12-21, 40:3-5; Luke 10:13-16 We get a rare glimpse of a family likeness today: Father and Son both letting off steam, both sounding provoked beyond endurance, both ticked off. And both complaining that we continue to be wilfully blind to the plain and glorious truth under our noses. I love Job, the …

Wednesday Week 23 Year II

Readings: 1 Cor 7:25-31; Lk 6:20-26 Setting his misogyny aside, I do love Paul’s urgency and absolute conviction that everything has changed. Everything is different after the death and resurrection of Jesus, with a difference that has diverted human—and even cosmic history—in a new direction. And in that new direction all the old rules cease …

Beheading of John the Baptist

Readings: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Mark 6:17-29  You could hardly have two readings more calculated to contradict each other than these. The first is bracing with promise: you will be a pillar of iron, a wall of bronze; they will not overcome you. And it’s quite a ‘they’ arrayed against the prophet: kings, princes, priests, and people. …

Feast of the Transfiguration Year B

Readings: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark 9:2-10  We’ve reached here the highpoint of Jesus ministry. Literally. In recent weeks he’s raised the dead, he’s made a meal for a multitude out of scraps and gleanings, he’s walked on water … and everywhere the crowds are following him in droves. These are his glory …