Faith in Progress

May 18, 2014 John 14:1-14 This is our 5 th week starting the service shouting out:    “Alleluia!   Christ is Risen!   The Lord is risen indeed!   Alleluia!”   But what does that mean?   It’s my 7 th Easter season as an ordained person and my 39 th Easter as a baptized Christian, and I’m still not sure I can pin down what it means to say that.   I know it has something to do with me, with all of us.   I know it contains a promise of Jesus somehow with us even now.   But I can’t pretend to always feel or live that way. In my experience as a parent, priest, and Sunday School teacher, I find that one of the most common questions from kids has to do with the idea of God/Jesus being with us now .   The old stories aren’t so much a problem (even the really outrageous ones).   Hearing about the bread and wine as Jesus’ Body and Blood doesn’t really seem to faze them.   But start talking about God as really present...

As part of a short series on creative spirituality and prayer for our 4th through 8th grade Sunday School group this past Sunday, we spent time this past Sunday with the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus.    First, we used the African Bible study method.  Three different readers read the story in three different translations (NRSV, The Message, and The Living Bible).  After each reading, each of us answered a question.  (1) What word or phrase stood out to you in this story? (2) Where does this passage touch your life today? and (3) From what I've heard and shared, what do you believe God wants you to do or be?  Is God inviting you to change in any way? We had a wonderful discussion, full of insight from the kids about how they see people and the idea of what it might mean that Jesus could be next to us without our knowing it.    Next, I let them choose whether we would do a led-Ignation meditation on...

3 Easter, Year A Luke 24:13-35 Life has been full of surprises lately. About a week ago I happened across a Ted talk by a woman named Tania Luna who studies the phenomena surprise.   She claims that surprise is incredibly important because when we are stopped in our tracks, we are naturally able to focus on the moment in front of us.   If we are paying attention, surprise is an alert that things didn’t happen as we expected, so it can help us to learn and grow and live more joyfully and even connect more deeply with others.   Little kids are great at this.   You can watch a baby or toddler’s surprise when they discover something new – bubbles or water or an animal.   But as we get older, many of us work to keep surprise out.   We don’t want to look like we don’t know what is going on; we want to be in control; we are reluctant to change our minds or be vulnerable.   And so we explain away things that surprise us with reason, or we avoid them alt...