Jesus offers a declaration of freedom, an invitation into a way of life that is so much better, so much richer, so much more promising than climbing that tired old ladder.

A sermon on Mark 10:17-31 by Rev. Kristín Tómasdóttir, on the challenge of faith in midlife.

It’s important to hear Jesus’s words on divorce in the context in which they were spoken: he’s dismissing a debate that objectified women and minimized their suffering.

Wholly apart from the concrete results that come from prayer—whether we get exactly what we ask for or not—it does accomplish something deeply significant: prayer draws a community together.

James offers us an opportunity to think about what our use of language has to do with our faith: what we claim to believe ought to make a difference in the way that we speak.

When James says you can’t be friends both with the world and with God, he means you can’t share two worldviews at once. You can’t go around holding on both to God’s values and to the world’s—you’ve got to make a choice.

For James, the integrity of our faith is at stake here. We cannot say we believe in Jesus and then proceed in drawing distinctions as the world does.

Christians can be anxious to speak, to share the wisdom we’ve found in our faith. And that’s good; but James reminds us that listening comes first.

The Gospel of John puts the incarnation, and the inherent physicality of Christianity, in front of us in the starkest possible terms. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing right now.

In this exceptional time when we’re not celebrating communion much, we’re invited to pay attention to the many ways God feeds us, to the moments of grace all around.