Claimed, gathered and sent

Here are some thoughts on this Sunday's gospel. What do you think? Let's talk about it. I shared this with the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church.   Gospel: John 11:1-15, 38-45 1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.  3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,  6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.   7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”  8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying...

This is the sermon I prepared and shared with the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church . We met together in spirit. The text was Ephesians 5:8-16 in The Message.   Bemus Point is always quiet this time of year, but not this eerily quiet. Stores and restaurants that are normally open are closed, seemingly abandoned. Lights are off, businesses are shuttered and life has seemingly screeched to a halt. The darkness seems to be winning.  In these days of COVID 19 does it ever seem like you are feeling your way through the darkness? What you knew yesterday isn’t true today. The situation keeps changing at a dizzying rate. There is a powerlessness to life in the darkness. What makes the darkness seem hopeless and helpless is the sense that the Lord is not there. Life within the darkness feels utterly alone. It reminds me a bit of life in Palestine when I lived there with my family in the 1980s. Day by day life changed. One day it was safe to go to this part of Bethlehem...