The Second Sunday After the Epiphany, January 17, 2010

Today we have the Bible’s version of a wedding disaster.  You’ve probably seen some wedding disaster footage on youtube or America’s Funniest Home Videos.  The bride or groom laughs or cries at the wrong moment.  Someone faints or trips or gets sick or muddles their words.  The little flower girl or ring bearer does something a little out of place.   It can all be pretty funny looking in from the outside, but probably not to those personally involved.  Weddings are weighted down with lots of expectations and they are very expensive and are taken very seriously.  Maybe a little too seriously.  Which, I’m afraid, often adds to the humor of some of these situations when things don’t go quite as planned.                                      

Jesus shows up in the village of Cana at the scene of today’s wedding disaster as recorded in our Gospel.  When things don’t go as planned, Jesus steps in and reveals himself as the one who fills our lives to overflowing.

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The First Sunday After the Epiphany, January 10, 2010

A Stranger in Our Midst

A couple of weeks before Christmas, my family and I went to a living nativity display at a church in our community.  It was an old fashioned little Christmas play with kids in bathrobes and a baby doll Jesus. All pretty familiar.  But when it was time for the Magi to arrive I was a little take aback by the fact that two of the three Wise Men were actually women!  That was new!  Of course, many feel that a good case can be made that the Magi actually were women based on the fact that they actually stopped and asked for directions.

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The Second Sunday After Christmas, January 3, 2010

What’s the deal with people stealing the baby Jesus from public nativity displays?  Have you heard some of these stories in the news?  It’s alarming and very peculiar, I think.  I think we’d all agree that this is a pretty mean-spirited crime.  But when I read some of the stories of these pranks as reported in local newspapers just this past week, I couldn’t help but laugh. 

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New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2009

It’s New Year’s Eve and all is well.

Town criers in medieval villages would announce the time of day at every hour with the words, “Six o’clock and all is well.”  That was a way to communicate to the residents of the village that they were safe from invasion, thieves and fire.   All through the night the watchmen reassured the people that there was no trouble or danger.

American Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote: “Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.”

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