Ash Wednesday

Readings – Job 1: 1-2: 1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1: 1-4; 2: 5-12; Mark 10: 2-16 Today our reading from the Good News according to St. Mark begins —          Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus         they asked… The testing of Jesus was never-ending.  It is also never-ending for us, the followers of Jesus. …

Readings – Deuteronomy 34:1-2; Psalm 90:1-6,13-17; I Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46 Scholars write that St. Paul’s letters to the congregation at Thessalonica may be the earliest of his letters, being written at 50 CE when St. Paul was in Corinth.  He may have written earlier letters, but these are the first letters we still have. …

Readings – Song of Solomon 2: 8-13; Psalm 45: 1-2, 7-10; James 1: 17-17; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23 These words jump out in today’s environment, as I am sure they jumped out when St. James wrote them.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this,to care for orphans and widows in…

Reading – Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17 From the Gospel, from the Good News, according to St. John, this reading is from the last hours of Jesus with his disciples in the upper room, immediately before his arrest, his flogging, his trial, his crucifixion, his death, and his burial.  The other three…

Readings – Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; I Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13 Their world was crashing down with the Babylonian Empire’s forces destroying everything and everyone in their path.  In the 8th c. B.C.E. the prophet Jeremiah wrote: My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. The contemporary psalmist wrote: O God,…