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

Did any of you think the same thing I did at the beginning of today’s Gospel? The part where Jesus says, “And blessed are those who take no offense at me.” I'm taking a page out of Matthew’s Gospel and saying the same thing, those of you who take offense from my sermons, well, let’s just say that those who take no offense are blessed, you others… I am sure I am doing you all a disservice when I say that, because the translation has been wrought several times over several centuries. Also, there is the fact that a human wrote this and wanted to be sure that people knew who it was meant for. This is one of those cases where your and my sleuthing can be of invaluable service to understanding the truth. Was this something Jesus said or something Matthew added as a kicker to get at those who disagreed with him? Let’s recap my hair brained advent idea, first, we are slime mold. Single celled organisms that self organize based on conditions and circumstances that bring us together to creat...

So now that we've all become slime mold, it’s time to take the next step. We have no mother cell, right? There is no central nervous system that is directing our every move. Instead, we come to this realization that together, as a community of people gathered we have a different being, a different purpose, a different function than as individuals apart. This is not to say that being apart and being individuals is less important or more dangerous. All I am saying is that apart we function one way, and together we function another. We talked a little bit on Wednesday at our Advent Forum about understanding how we relate with the Church, or how we define ourselves in relationship with worship. Often when describing our experiences, or describing what church is, we describe it as something that we did. We celebrated Eucharist. We worshiped God. We sang songs and hymns of joy. It is not very often that we describe our experience of Church as a place where something happened to us. Where...