Month: January 2021

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. [Mark 1:25-26, NRSV, a portion of the Gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year B]. A few years ago, I shared a series of difficult conversations with a mother of two children, one about 14, the other 8 or 9 [some of the facts have been altered to protect the parties]. In one of the sessions, the woman, whom I knew to be in her early 40s, said to me, “I know what happened to me was terrible,…

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” [Jonah 3:1-2]. Because of you-know-what, our family, like yours, could not celebrate Christmas 2020 in the usual manner. For Jane and me, there was no packed Duke Chapel for Handel’s Messiah, no crowded church service on Christmas Eve, and no hustle and bustle with last minute gift errands. Because the weather forecasts for Christmas Day here in Durham weren’t promising, the extended family (children, spouses, and 7 grandchildren) gathered on the Tuesday evening before Christmas at–not inside–Zambrero’s, a new restaurant in the…

And the lad Samuel was ministering to the LORD in Eli’s presence, and the word of the LORD was rare in those days, vision was not spread about [1 Samuel 3:1, The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter, a portion of the Old Testament reading for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year B]. Quick, quick, think to yourself, “What do I remember about Samuel, from the Old Testament?” Don’t do an online search. What do you remember? If you’re like a lot of folks, you may think your memory is sparse. But I bet you remember more than you imagine. I bet, for example, you remember Samuel’s mother,…