Category Archives: Messages

In the New Testament there are two aspects to faith exercised. It is confident reliance on God. It is the act by which one lays hold on God’s offered resources and becoming obedient to what God prescribes, and, abandoning all self interest and self-reliance, trusting God completely. This is the meaning Paul implies for the noun ‘faith’. This isn’t Old Testament faithfulness – where one who exercises faith is made firm and reliable. That is relying on one’s own determination which, interestingly enough could be seen as ‘good works’. Faith is utter reliance on God. Continue reading →

… in our story today Jesus confronts the economic systems of his own time and provides an unexpected kind of healing. The text says ‘His heart went out to her’. No one asks Jesus to do anything. She doesn’t beg for Jesus’ intercession. The text just says that Jesus was moved to compassion. Continue reading →

we want to believe that God always stands up for us, if we stand up for God. God provides for those who obey God and do what is right. I’d certainly like to assure you of that. But I can’t. At least not is this life. When you or I chose to challenge the authorities or the prevailing opinions in our neighborhood or nation over a matter of injustice or oppression what we must be prepared to accept is rejection and punishment to the full extent of the law. Otherwise it’s not a risk. Continue reading →

The Capernaum Elders and the Centurion’s friends have gotten over looked in our retelling of this story of faithfulness. This isn’t a story of the Centurion and Jesus – it is a story of a faithful community, people who are willing to carry the hopes and prayers of those in need to Jesus. It is a community of faithfulness who connects you and me by caring for the needs of one another. Continue reading →

If the Greeks were right about the meaning of truth and if Jesus was right about the gift of the Spirit of Truth and its work in our lives we are all the more appreciative of Keirkegaard’s understanding that it isn’t that we go trolling for truth, looking under every rock and critiquing every philosopher or theologian. He said that we don’t grab hold of truth, it grabs us. We can only have it as it snares us and makes of us its captive. Truth isn’t an idea, a notion, an hypothesis or a creed. It is being loving held hostage by Christ’s own spirit and our allowing that Spirit to fill all the empty places in our lives. It scrubs out the residue of our less than inspired behaviors and acquisitions and then replaces in those places of our lives which we’ve conveniently filled with stuff extraneous to living a spirit led life, until we are completely filled by the love of Christ. Continue reading →

The Gospel reading for today, Pentecost Sunday, is from the 14th Chapter of John. It includes the promise of this anointing of the followers of Jesus and by extension us to continue the spirit empowered ministry of God’s work in the world as begun by Jesus. You can hardly separate these twenty verses from the flow of John 13:31 through the end of the 17th Chapter. These are the very tender farewell conversations Jesus has with his closest followers bracketed by Judas leaving the gathering as night falls and Jesus’ own departure to the garden of Gethsemane to await is arrest, trial and execution. Continue reading →

…thanks be to God for this tenacious Syrophoenician theologian and mother. But don’t lose track of the simplicity of it all. Her theology doesn’t originate in books and study; it’s an expression of painfully experienced need and fierce motherly love. Continue reading →

Reflecting the Elephant in the Meeting Room A Message Shared by Kitty D. Benedixen-Park in Meeting for Worship at Spokane Friends May 5, 2013   Elephants have very sophisticated hearing, and incredible infrasound, which is very low-frequency sound that can … Continue reading →

Jesus asks “For which of these (works) are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy’”.  It wasn’t the Messianic implications that whips them … Continue reading →

Waylaid On the Road to Righteousness. A Japanese Christian wrote of the experience of his country before and then a precisely 8:16 on the morning of August 6th, 1945.  In 1941 the Emperor of Japan declared war on the United … Continue reading →