A Two Goal Lead is the Most Dangerous Lead...

We are the sheep we are the coin. For some it is the question of what the Bible is about. Is the Bible about our humanity, is it the story of who we are as God’s created people or is the Bible fundamentally about God, and God’s actions in history on behalf of God’s people? Is today’s Gospel about our response, stop running away from God, hiding from God, and open our hearts to God who is searching for us always, who is looking for us all the time and who loves us with reckless abandon? God is the shepherd, God is the woman, searching for us, looking for us while we wait, hidden, and hoping to be found. My hesitation with this interpretation of the Gospel comes in light of the Gospel we read weeks ago, about Jesus’ commissioning the disciples to go into towns before him, to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal, to me this sounds not unlike what this shepherd was doing, not unlike what this woman did to find her lost coin. We are called to be missionaries; we are called to heal the...

It is said that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. How bound to the earth are we as we try to reason ourselves into the air? One of my favorite songs is sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It is called “Why walk when you can fly”, it is a wonderfully light song that recognizes the great pains and troubles in the world yet asks, why walk when we all could fly. Why be burdened and held by the bonds of our fear and anxiety when we could let them all go and fly to soaring heights. Paul Tillich, a great theologian once wrote, “The burden Jesus wants to take for us is the burden of religion. It is the yoke of law imposed on people of His time by the religious leaders, the wise and understanding. Those who labor and are weary laden are those who are sighing under the yoke of the religious law. And He will give them the power to overcome religion and the law; the law Jesus gives them is a new being above religion. The thing they will learn from him is the victory over th...