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Thanksgiving can be hard...both the national holiday, and the act of gratitude. But Jesus, in our Gospel lesson for today, a clip from the Sermon on the Mount about worry, providence, and thanksgiving, offers us a solution. We can find ourselves poisoned by the negativity around us and within us sometimes, and gratitude opens us up to...more. More joy, more connection, more life. So join us today for a meditation on the power of gratitude.

It's time for All Saints Sunday, folks, one of the weirdest and, arguably, most wonderful celebrations in the Christian Year. We take a Sunday to remember and honor and grieve those who have died...but it's not a morbid service. It is an affirmation of legacy, and love, and life, the connections that still hold us together. Enjoy today's conversation, and maybe find a church on Sunday to enter in to the mystery that is life. 

Welcome to the book of Job: one of the most fascinating and frustrating books in all our scripture. Famous, but often misunderstood, this ancient work of fiction brings us to questions of grief, accident, and loss. How do we make sense of life when it is so blatantly unfair, and God is absent and/or mysterious? Are we faithful simply to work a system of reward and punishment, or because righteousness is inherently good? What are the ways we are helpful (or profoundly unhelpful) to those in the midst of suffering? Do we truly believe God can handle the messiness of our rage and lament, when those are the only honest and holy responses? Job is a book that resists resolution and easy answers, but it will bring us to some timelessly important questions. 

It's Worldwide Communion Sunday, and we are revisiting the vision of unity, abundance, and wholeness that is at the heart of what Communion is. This Sunday reminds us that this "togetherness" is not just a mystery, but something we live out daily in the way we enact our faith. Two Gospel stories this week...Zacchaeus, and John's version of the Feeding of the 5000...illustrate the heart of the Kingdom...welcome, plenty, transformation. 

We talk often about how the Bible is written by many, many authors across many, many years, and so there will be differing perspectives, opinions, and voices contained within its pages. This a good thing, leading to depth, richness, and diversity.

But sometimes our scriptures speak loudly, with one voice. And this week is one of those times...James and Mark are both proclaiming the same truth about the ways of this world, and the ways of God's Realm. And though they employ different ways of communicating, the message is the same. Join us this week for a journey into pride and humility, power and servanthood, death and life.

James has a lot to say this week about the power, for both good and for evil, of speech. In twelve short verses, he drills down to the bedrock of the matter, that the words we speak and how we speak them can create, and nurture, and inspire, or they can destroy, and poison, and defeat. He bases this in solid Creational theology, and calls upon Christians to speak words of life. Good stuff. Join us as we explore the power of words.

In a shocking turn of events, we're on the same scripture passage this week! (And we will be at least throughout September.) We're taking a deep dive into the Book of James, notably Martin Luther's least favorite book of the entire Bible. We will be talking, faith, works, salvation, the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of this World, and salty epistle authors. Fun! Join us!

The Whole Armor of God, and the blazing courage of the woman with a hemorrhage, are our topics today...and there is a lot of overlap. We talk first about the metaphor in the Letter to the Ephesians about God's Armor, and how that actually undermines a militant, violent interpretation of Christian faith. Then we go all in on courage, and how it is grounded in a profound trust in the Divine. You should join us for these interesting, interwoven exploration of the Word.

We are on two different tracks again this week, but also again, they are surprisingly close...community, the human condition, the call of grace, repentance and transformation, found in the story of Jesus eating with sinners, and contrasted with the story of Herod's execution of John the Baptizer. It's all there in these two tales from the Gospel of Mark, who understands the siren call of power, and the power of God to transform.