When Mike and I lived in Oregon, even though we had a car, we liked to get up sometimes of a Saturday morning and go on a bus adventure. Mike generally rode the bus to work in those days, so he bought a monthly pass that allowed him to ride any bus or train to anywhere in the Portland metro area. At the time it cost him under $50 each month—substantially less than the upkeep of another vehicle. And I would buy a day pass that allowed me to do the same thing, just for the day.
The first human being walked on the moon three days after my first birthday. My dad says I watched it on TV, but I don’t remember it.
The three astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission carried cameras with them, and they took a number of photos that have become iconic. One of the most haunting was taken by Michael Collins, as he orbited the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon’s surface in the lunar module, the Eagle. The picture has been called “Every human being except Michael Collins.” It shows the lunar lander on its way to the moon, with Earth rising in the distant background.
I’m not a real big sports fan—other than college basketball, baseball, hockey…and curling. Most of those I am happy to watch on TV, but not hockey.
It’s just not possible for the camera to be in the right place when the fight starts. And there’s always a fight. I think they’ve done a bit to reduce that over the years, and fighters do have to do their time in the penalty box, but hockey is an intense game and there is at the very least a good amount of aggressive shoving of opposing players into the walls of the rink.
One of my seminary professors used to introduce lessons from time to time by imagining phone conversations between movie studio execs and Cecil B. DeMille as he worked on his epic films about the Bible.
Two years ago, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, and Putin was throwing ominous threats to anybody who dared stop him, somebody posted a message on Twitter for younger folks who were listening to him and scared. The message said, “Go find your nearest GenXer and hold on for dear life.”
March 10, 2024 (4th Sunday in Lent) “The Greatest Commandment” Mark 12:28-44
“What do you want me to do for you?”
The question, with a very slight variation in wording, appears twice in our reading today. Once it’s addressed to James and John, who ask for something that demonstrates how very blind they are to who Jesus is and what he came to do. He has just finished saying, for the third time, that when they get to Jerusalem, things are going to get really scary and really bad, and Jesus would be arrested and crucified—but then on the third day he would rise again. And their immediate response was to ask to sit on his right hand and his left, when he is in his glory and sitting on his eternal throne.
As they walked home to Capernaum, Jesus and his disciples had some time alone. Jesus had made sure of it, because there were some things he wanted to talk to them about.
For the second time, he tried to explain to them what would be coming up for him—telling them about his betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection. But as before, it didn’t compute.
This is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is the word for when we suddenly and dramatically become aware of some new reality, aware that all is not as it seems. The season begins with the story of Magi traveling across the desert to see the new King of the Jews—a story that is found only in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a high point in the story of Jesus, and it’s followed immediately by a terrible and tragic low point, when Jesus and his parents are forced to flee for their lives because King Herod (not the same Herod that was in our reading last week, but his father, or maybe grandfather) cannot abide the thought of a new king coming to take his place.
Quite some time ago, I was driving somewhere and had the car radio tuned to NPR. It was a Saturday morning, so I was listening to “Car Talk.” I didn’t really care one way or another about that program, but it was on, so I listened to it.
One of Leonard Cohen’s early songs includes this line: “Jesus was a sailor.” But after hearing this text from Mark, I have to wonder.
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