Faith Scribbling

Focus Scripture: Mark 1:21-28 January 28, 2024 – 4 th Sunday After Epiphany Put It to the Test Jesus knows who and what we are. The lesson from Mark’s gospel today is one of many examples of this. Whether Jesus is calling a tax collector to be an apostle, asking another person to drop his fishing nets to follow, or identifying and casting out an unclean spirit, Jesus always knew what people were about. As Jesus is God, this is not surprising. Unfortunately, we are not always as adept at and equipped to do the same thing. Appearances and titles can throw us off, misleading us into being deceived by another. Depending on the context, this can and does do real harm. Until recently, this episode of Jesus silencing and casting out a demon did not seem remarkable to me. After all, there are many scenarios similar to this one in the Gospels. Maybe you recall Jesus casting out many demons into a herd of swine (Matt 8:28-34). While there are specific, detailed encounters like the one

Focus Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 January 21 – 3 rd Sunday After Epiphany Perspective Matters What does it feel like when someone discounts your feelings? What might you say when someone responds to your excitement or concern with some negative or dismissive comment? It does not feel good, right? Oh, you just got married? Well, that’s not going to last long. You are excited about that promotion at work? Curb your enthusiasm. You are mourning the death of a loved one? Get over it. Just considering this might be getting you a little angry or stressed, right? Maybe you are recalling a time when that happened. After all, most of us have experienced encounters in our lives when people just were not getting where we were coming from. Their empathy was lacking, they were insensitive or worse, and it made us feel bad. It would be easy to take this as Paul’s meaning in the letter to the church at Corinth. The time is short! Don’t get too involved in your life. The present

Focus Scripture: John 1:43-51 January 14, 2024 – 2 nd Sunday After Epiphany & Human Relations Day What Do You Expect? Among the many things we can say about Jesus is that he was full of surprises. From where he was born to how he conducted himself, Jesus was not a conformist. Today’s episode concerning his interaction with Nathanael is no exception. When I read this gospel passage, I visualize Jesus smiling, maybe even chuckling, when he spoke with Nathanael. As we have seen so many times, Jesus could see a person’s heart and verbalized his observations often. From the rich young man who loved his money too much to the Roman centurion who had greater faith than anyone else, Jesus knew the hearts of those he encountered. Who among us cannot relate to Nathanael and his reaction when first learning of Jesus? We do it all the time. When hearing of Jesus’s hometown, he famously remarked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Just this week, there was a story that came o

  Focus Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12 January 7, 2024 – Epiphany Sunday The Star Still Shines The world can be a very dark place. In places torn by war and other conflicts, there is darkness. In times throughout history when strongmen ruled, there was darkness. When people are marginalized, victimized, and squeezed for every penny the have in our consumerist culture, there is darkness. And even in Jesus’s time, when the Light of the World had entered the world, there was darkness. Yet, the star still shines. Matthew’s gospel brings us forward from where we were over the last two weeks – at the manger and in the temple to dedicate Jesus to God, to a time as long as two years after Jesus’s birth. The choir of angels is gone, the quiet of the silent night is a memory, and the joy Simeon and Anna expressed as in the past. Like so many scenarios we read about in the Gospels, there is tension in this one to balance with the joy. We have the joy of the visiting magi. The tension is from