Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A Acts 1:6-14,1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11,John 17:1-11 According to the book of Acts, the Apostles have been seeing a lot of Jesus in the 40 days after his crucifixion and resurrection. On one of these days, the apostles are speaking with the risen Christ. They seem to be unsettled by their lack of knowledge of future events. They want to know when the kingdom of Israel will be restored. This type of question isn’t new. They often want to know more than they can humanly know. And again Jesus is not going to give into their desires. He promises that they will receive what they need. They will have power when the Holy Spirit comes and they will be his witnesses throu
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:7-18, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21 I wonder how the disciple’s lives changed by being in the almost constant presence of the Lord. From our point of view, it is difficult to say. They still have struggles. They still fight amongst themselves. They don’t seem to understand the meaning of life any better than we do. And they still have loss. Today we continue where we left off last week as Jesus comforts the disciples. Jesus is leaving them soon and he wants them to know that they will not be alone. Even though they cannot go where he is going and they cannot see the Father, Jesus is not just abandoning his friends; he is not leaving the
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A Acts 7:55-60, John 14:1-14 Today Jesus is saying goodbye to the disciples. Our reading is just a small part of Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples in which he washed their feet, exposed Judas’s betrayal, and foretells of Peters three-fold denial before the cock crows. He even tells them that he is leaving and they cannot go where he is going. Amongst all this denial, betrayal, and loss, the disciples have to be anxious much as family members are after the death of their loved one. Many of us probably find today’s Gospel to be familiar because it is one of the more popular choices to read at funerals. Its popularity could be from the way the passage speaks
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-10 If you have never experienced bureaucracy all you need to do is start a new job at a VA hospital. I have worked at two different locations over the years. In both cases, after being hired, I was required to go in at least six weeks prior to my start date, to fill out a mass of paperwork, get my picture taken for an ID, and most recently I even needed fingerprints. All this may not be too unusual but it was much more than was required at any of other hospitals I worked at. No other facility needed six weeks or more to process paperwork. What really makes this experience unusual is that in both cases the hos
