Proper 8, Year C, RCL, Track 1 Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62 Hospitality is vitally important in ancient times. You are to open your doors to your kin, to your neighbors, to people of similar religious tradition, and even to strangers. Hospitality ensures that people have their basic needs met; food, water, and shelter. This concept is a cultural precept that is found throughout the Bible. In today’s narrative, it appears that the Samaritans do not offer the disciples hospitality. And it’s no wonder; the Samaritans and Jews didn’t like each other very much. It is typically thought that they would sooner help anyone else than cross the line of Samaritan or Jew. Our story today makes me wo
1 Kings 19:1-15a; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39 A demoniac, a man who is possessed by a demon, lives naked among the tombs in the cemetery. The people are afraid of him. But he is also afraid of the people. For he has been subdued many times by the villagers and each time the possessed man becomes stronger until he can no longer be contained. What seems clear in this story is that this man is not acting of his own accord, there are outside pressures that have made this man into what he is today. Few people today believe in demonic possession and they would tell us that this man has a mental illness. In my mind, this doesn’t matter too much. Either way, it is outside forces that have preven
Trinity Sunday, Year C, RCL Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15 Many religions have similar precepts as Christianity. Their moral compass tends to point in the same direction. What sets Christianity apart from other religions is the Trinity; what we are celebrating today. The Trinity is not a philosophical concept, a way of rationally explaining the unexplainable. Any attempts we use to explain our God come up short because our God is beyond our comprehension and explanation. But this is not why we have the Trinity. The Trinity not a logical construct of God. For it seems that a Trinitarian concept follows no logic at all; three individual persons comprising one God; complete unity, yet diversity. N
