ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSApril 3, 2024It wasn’t until four years ago that I first learned that we had lost Emmaus. According to Luke’s Gospel, the first resurrection encounter occurred on the Road to Emmaus when two unnamed individuals encountered the Risen Christ, yet they did not recognize him until he broke the bread with them. According to the story found in Luke 24, Emmaus is a town an hour’s walk
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSApril 2, 2024Yesterday, Texas Christian University (TCU) made an important public announcement. They are dropping their historic mascot, the Horned Frog, and going with a Fighting Squirrel. Of course, it was an April Fools’ Joke… and it was good. The TCU Chancellor, Victor Boschini, did a great job presenting the gag on a well-done video. Why do we have an unofficial national holiday where we try to
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSApril 1, 2024Prayer for the Week: Eternal God, Never-ending Source of Love, we pause on this Monday after Easter with the hope that we did not leave the substance of Easter well packaged and fully preserved within the confines of Easter Day. Since death and a tomb could not contain you, why should we act as if a day on the calendar could even begin to hold
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSEASTER SUNDAYMarch 31, 2024Good Morning! It is Easter!! For forty days, we have been on a Lenten Journey that culminates today. And though our Lenten Theme of Pressing the Reset Button has come to a conclusion, I pray that you took seriously the notion of the reset in your own life and maybe even found a couple of specific places to start. One of the areas where
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSMarch 30, 2024On what is often called Dark Saturday, I am looking a little further into Matthew’s telling of Holy Week, specifically after the arrest and torture of Jesus. In Matthew 26:71-72, we read of what is often called Peter’s Denial: “When Peter had gone out to the gate, another servant girl saw him and said to some people there, ‘This man was with Jesus from Nazareth.’
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSMarch 29, 2024As we take another step in this Holy Week experience, I am drawn to the words immediately before the arrest of Jesus, as he was praying in the garden, and you can feel his anguish. There we read, “Again Jesus went to pray and said, ‘My Father, if there is no other way, and I must suffer, I will still do what you want’” (Matthew
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSMarch 28, 2024As we move further into the Holy Week story as told in Matthew’s Gospel, we learn of an unnamed woman who entered the home of Simon the Leper (how would you like to have what sounds like a last name be an illness that you have? I’d be Bruce the Multiple Sclerosis) and opened a jar containing very expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus’
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSMarch 27, 2024There are many passages of scripture that leave me scratching my head, and the words from the opening of Matthew 23 are one example. It reads, [Jesus said,] “The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law are experts in the Law of Moses. So obey everything they teach you, but don’t do as they do. After all, they say one thing and do something else.”
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSMarch 26, 2024In Matthew’s Gospel, a short time after Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, there are a number of teaching moments. Many of them come from conversations and conflict, including a debate over resurrection (Matthew 22). Of course, it came in a roundabout way, as some of the religious were trying to stir an argument with Jesus. I find it interesting that Jesus, though offering some broad
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS March 25, 2024Prayer for the Week:Holy WeekA journey from incomplete joy to the fullness of joyA journey that ended for many when the parade concluded A journey seeking to bind together the fullness of the human experience A journey immersed in pain betrayal, taunting, false allegationsA journey to the instrument of Rome’s torturous insanityA journey with words of unimaginable mercy and kindness A journey to death, darkness, lostness, an