Luke 2: 22-40 (links validated 1/20/25a)

Years later, I learned a remarkable story from that papal visit (in 1995 to the NY/NJ area). This visit also included stops to that city across the Hudson – as well as to Baltimore. As was typical for Pope John Paul II he maintained an incredibly demanding schedule with major events at the United Nations, Masses at Central Park and Camden Yards – despite his age and battle with Parkinson’s disease. His love for Jesus seemed to give him boundless energy, even as his body struggled to keep up. It was at one of his rest stops, something unusual happened. One of the organizing priests, knowing the Pope’s tendency to spend extended time in prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament, deliberately kept a chapel door closed, hoping to keep the tight schedule on track. This door looked exactly like all the others in the hallway – there was nothing to distinguish it as an entrance to a chapel. Yet as Pope John Paul II walked past, he suddenly stopped. He turned back, looked at that particular door, and wagged his finger at the organizing priest. Without ever having been in that building before, he knew. He opened the door, went straight into the chapel, and prayed before the Blessed Sacrament. (Which indeed messed up the planned schedule, but not surprisingly everything was done and fulfilled as had been promised) This wasn’t an isolated incident – many similar stories tell of the Pope’s extraordinary ability to sense the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, even in unfamiliar places...

When the Communists took over Russia in the last century, one ritual of the Orthodox Church took on surprising power. Until that time, you might have thought that the purpose of the Orthodox Church was to underwrite the rule of the Czars. There was very little sense that the church engaged with politics or economics. When the Communists took power, here was a church that might have seemed peculiarly ill-suited to challenge the status quo. There was one Russian Orthodox habit, however, that brought the church out of the church. Before the celebration of Communion, the priest was expected to go to the porch of the church and ring a hand-bell. That bell was to tell the people in the village that Communion was beginning. The early Communist regime outlawed the ringing of the hand-bell as part of its anti-religious campaign. Orthodox priests are unfailingly traditionalist by nature, and they just continued to stand on the porch, ringing their little bells, asserting their deepest commitment, finding it impossible to do otherwise. The state reacted by jailing and slaughtering priests by the thousands. By refusing to give up the ringing of the bell, Orthodox Christians confronted its nation's rulers with a determination that they did not know they had...

I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther’s King’s last sermon, often called “The Mountaintop Speech,” which ended in a rhetorical flourish: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! So I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything! I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! Dr. King was assassinated the day after he made this speech...

Thirty years ago, one of the popular films was Harold Ramis’s “Groundhog Day.” While the film wasn’t a huge box office success, it was a hit with critics, and it has become perhaps more popular since then—it’s one of those films that sort of grows on you as you discover the deeper dimensions of what seems a rather superficial comedy. It tells the story of Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray. Phil is a TV weatherman, who finds himself, pretty much against his will, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the anticipated traditional appearance of the famous groundhog whose view of his shadow will indicate whether we get an early spring or a longer winter. But what happens to Phil is like something out of science fiction. He stumbles through his day, he gets stuck in Punxsutawney because of a blizzard, and when he wakes up the next morning, he discovers that it isn’t the next morning at all. It is Groundhog Day all over again. He faces the same situations, the same people, the same events—the only thing that he is able to change, it seems, is his own reaction and response to what happens. The next morning it is the same thing again, and then again. More than thirty times, he wakes up and finds it is still Groundhog Day...

“Shut up. Suit up. Show up.” Those six words are the daily mantra of a psychologist named James Hollis. He says them to himself as he rides the elevator down to his car each morning. (Hollis, Living Between Worlds, 132) With the first he’s telling himself “to stop whining and complaining” (Ibid.). It’s his recognition that there are so many people on this planet “who have no home tonight, who have no food, whose children are being murdered” (Hollis, A Life of Meaning, 116) and that he has a roof over his head, food on the table, and relative security. (Living Between Worlds, 132) I suspect that’s true for most of us here today. Though I sometimes complain, I really don’t have anything to complain about. How about you? For Hollis, “suit up” means that we deal with our life as it is. We don’t run away from life or make excuses. We don’t hide from or avoid what is before us and what is being asked of us. We don’t give up when life is hard or doesn’t go our way. We do our homework. We prepare. We get dressed and ready for life. (Living Between Worlds, 132; A Life of Meaning, 116) Some days that’s easier to do than other days. You know that as well as I do. The third part reminds him “that we all have to show up.” That’s really all any of us can do. (A Life of Meaning, 116) I’ve often said to myself and to others that 90 or 95% of life is just showing up. We show up as best we can and offer what we have. We don’t hold back and we keep nothing in reserve. It’s a vulnerable but authentic way to live. We do it today, again tomorrow, and the day after. Sometimes showing up is the hardest work we do...

includes lots of Greek exegesis!

always good insights!

Marian Wright Edelman, the noted attorney, civil rights champion, child advocate and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, paints a vivid picture of her childhood "village experience" in her book Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors. Edelman writes reflectively: My parents did not have to raise me and my sister and brothers alone. The whole community helped them and me just as they helped other people raise their children. Every place I went, there were eyes watching me and people reporting on me when I strayed into places or company or engaged in behavior they knew or thought my parents would not approve...

A few years ago, I was at a Mass where a priest-friend of mine was being installed as the new pastor of a parish. Before we began, a middle-aged woman came into the sacristy and asked the bishop who was officiating that ceremony if he would be able to offer a blessing for her parents who were celebrating their anniversary that night. He said “even better, how would they like to renew their vows?” Which they were very excited to do. After communion, the bishop invited the couple to come up. These two older people started walking slowly, carefully up the aisle. The entire way up the aisle, they never stopped holding each others hands, and as they passed pew upon pew of people, you could see how their eyes were filling with tears. When they arrived at the foot of the altar, the bishop asked them how many years they had been married – the wife responded “60 years ago today.” The bishop then followed up asking “where did you get married?” and the wife proudly responded “Right here,” as she pointed her finger to the floor marking the very spot in front of the altar where they had stood all those decades earlier...

On Christmas morning, the preacher spoke about reverence for all children. He referred to the many awful cases of child abuse reported in the media and said that all children should be reverenced like the Christ Child. As he spoke a little three-year-old girl detached herself from her parents and stood in the center isle of the church sending flying kisses in all directions. "I do not understand" said the preacher, "how anyone could treat with violence something so charming and beautiful and delicate as this little girl." Her father sitting on the nearby seat was as good and gentle and loving as any father could be. But he said under his breath, "often, I can!"...

But there is a way to reconnect with a sense of community and you can do it as part of your prayer life. We are good at giving thanks for things; we need to pay more attention to giving thanks for people. A. J. Jacobs is a writer who set out to do this by giving thanks for everyone involved in his morning cup of coffee. He started to consciously thank people for some of his food. Jacobs made a point of getting the names of people. He thanked Chung, the barista, and Ed, the coffee taster who selects the coffee, and named and contacted many, many others, all to say thank you. He went on to thank the trucker who brought the coffee to the store. But then there was also the people who built the truck and carved the highway out on which the truck drove. There were the people who bought large sacks of coffee beans and roasted them, there were the people who packaged it. There were the people who grew the coffee of course. He called his project, “Thanks a thousand,’ because he ended up thanking over a thousand people...

The pain and suffering that Mary will feel has captured the imagination of many an artist. From Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta (c. 1501) to this curated collection from The Visual Commentary on Scripture, we see both Mary’s love and her awareness; a sword truly has pierced her own heart. Photographer Jon Henry’s recent project, “Stranger Fruit: American Pietàs,” lets us into a knowing mother’s perspective in our own contemporary time.

Jesus was still in diapers when his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem as the custom was, and that’s when old Simeon spotted him. Years before, he’d been told he wouldn’t die till he’d seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out. When the moment finally came, one look through his cataract lenses was all it took. He asked if it would be all right to hold the baby in his arms, and they told him to go ahead but be careful not to drop it. ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation’ he said, the baby playing with the fringes of his beard. The parents were pleased as punch, so he blessed them too for good measure. Then something about the mother stopped him, and his expression changed. What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend. ‘A sword will pierce through your soul,’ he said. He would rather have bitten off his own tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice. Then he handed her back the baby and departed in something less than the perfect peace he’d dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.”

Life is busy, there is no denying that, but do we as a society choose to make ourselves busier? In the movie, The Sandlot, a group of kids gets together to just play baseball, hangout, eat smores (smore what?), and just be kids. This seems so odd to us today. Why would they waste their time just playing? What about all their AP classes, traveling teams, competitions, practices, church activities, and other commitments. How are they going to be the best at what they do, if they play just for fun?...

Richard Bauckham, FRSE, FBA, is a renowned English biblical scholar and theologian, whose many published works include The Theology of the Book of Revelation (1993) and Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006). He’s also a hobbyist poet! I’ve published this poem with his permission. It’s inspired by Luke 2:22–38, which describes two aged Jews, “righteous and devout,” who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” the Messiah, for many years and finally encountered him at the temple one day in the infant Jesus of Nazareth. This “Presentation at the Temple,” as the episode is called, is commemorated yearly by Christians on February 2, Candlemas. Bauckham’s definition of prayer—“waiting with desire”—is the most succinct, and probably the best, I’ve ever heard. His poem enjoins us to assume the same “waiting with desire” posture as Simeon and Anna as we look fervently toward the Christ’s second coming, when God will dwell with humanity face to face once again, this time everlastingly.

Pope Francis said that as a child, he heard a story of a family with a mother, father, many children, and a grandfather. The grandfather, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, would drop food on the dining table, drop and break bowls, and smear food all over his face when he ate. His son considered it disgusting. Hence, one day he bought a small table, a wooden bowl and spoon and set it off to the side of the dining room so the grandfather could eat, make a mess and not disturb the rest of the family. One day, the Pope said, the grandfather’s son came home and found one of his sons playing with a piece of wood. “What are you making?” he asked his son. “A table,” the son replies. “Why?” the father asks. “It’s for you, Dad. When you get old like Grandpa, I am going to give you this table.” (In the American version of the story, the boy was making a wooden bowl). After that day, the grandfather was given a prominent seat at the dining table and all the help he needed in eating by his son and daughter-in-law. “This story has done me such good throughout my life,” said the Pope, who celebrated his 87th birthday on December 17, 2023. “Grandparents are a treasure,” he said. “Often old age isn’t pretty, right? There is sickness and all that, but the wisdom our grandparents have is something we must welcome as an inheritance.” A society or community that does not value, respect and care for its elderly members “doesn’t have a future because it has no memory, it has lost its memory,” Pope Francis added.

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Queen Elizabeth II, offering her condolences to the people of the United States, wrote: “My thoughts and prayers are with you all now, and in the difficult days ahead. But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments.” But then she added a much-needed, quite maternal insight: “Grief is the price we pay for love.”...

It was announced earlier this week that nearly 200 young people have gone missing from places where they ought to have been safe over the last 18 months. Usually when one child goes missing, there are tearful press conferences with their anxious parents, and whole neighbourhoods offering to help with the search, t-shirts printed, and flyers plastered on lamp-posts. Why the lack of interest in this case? It’s because they were unaccompanied refugees - asylum seekers under the age of 18 who had arrived in this country without parents. They’d been housed in hotels – often with no real regard for the normal safeguarding practices - but many had subsequently vanished, in many cases apparently just picked up by traffickers right outside the places they were staying. Around half have been traced, but many haven’t and have disappeared into the shadowy world of modern slavery...

Howard Thurman has written: When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among people, To make music in the heart.

Not long after I saw that clip of Alicia Keys with her tribute to Kobe Bryant, a priest friend of mine who is a fellow campus minister up at Boston University posted this on his facebook wall: As sad as Kobe’s death is, a friend texted me today to tell me that a friend of her’s attends the same Catholic Church as Kobe and saw him this morning at Mass. There can be nothing more consoling to those who mourn than to know that a loved one worshiped God right before his death because worshiping God is what heaven is.” The priests at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles corroborated that news. Kobe Bryant and his daughter who was Catholic had been at the Cathedral at 7:00 AM that Sunday Morning. They received the same Jesus that Simeon and Anna held in their arms and made their proclamations about thousands of years earlier in today’s Gospel… He is as real and present in the Eucharist. They had come to know and believed and received Him here on earth, and we pray to God for them and all the other victims of that crash that Jesus has now received them into His eternal kingdom of heaven...

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. we are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time...

By being willing to acknowledge the things I do have power over and things I don’t, I recognize what’s worth worrying about, along with what I need to let go of. A prayer that was written in honor of Oscar Romero puts it well: “It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us… We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.”...(by Bishop Ken Uetener)

The tale of Simeon and Anna is a tale of grace. Anna’s name means “grace”, an early reminder by Luke that his gospel is a story of God’s free gift of self to us through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Simeon and Anna are recognized and graced by God. That is why the aged Simeon, over a long period of waiting and from the numerous children brought to the temple, recognized God’s salvation in Christ...

Once upon a time there was a race which was lost in a great, dark forest. The trees stood so close together that the light of the sun could not penetrate the thickly entwined branches. There were also numerous wild animals which fell upon the people, especially the children, when they wandered too far from their parents while they were playing. So everyone lived in a constant state of fear of death and destruction, and a hopeless despair took hold of the hearts of the folk...

Every Friday, I spend a few hours visiting people who are really old. A lot of the people I visit suffer from loss: loss of control of movements, loss of strength, loss of the ability to feed oneself, and even loss of the ability to think, to recognize others. I think a lot of them suffer from depression. Some of them sleep all of the time, waking only to eat or be cared for by the nurse's aides...

No one more perfectly captured the dolorous dying of the light than Shakespeare's Macbeth. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing...

"theologian Leslie Weatherhead says that…‘Love in the New Testament is stern and strong and severe and virile. It is not sloppy and sentimental and weak…Love is all the things St Paul described…. , but it has steel in it as well as tears and a smashing power greater far than dynamite. Love suffers, entreats and endures, and fools think this is weakness. But those who oppose love take up arms against the whole universe. They will be broken, not love. For love is invincible..."

I read a book recently by the late Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen, and I’d like to finish by telling you a story from it. In the mid 1980s, Nouwen gave up his respected academic job at a university to live as part of a community with adults with learning disabilities . He was still in demand to give talks around the world, but the community made a decision that whenever he travelled, he should be accompanied by one of the learning disabled adults, so they could do the work together. That meant that, on one trip to an academic conference in New York, Bill came along too. Bill had a whale of a time in the swanky hotel where the conference was taking place, and as Nouwen climbed up onto the platform to give his lecture, Bill got up and joined him, pitching in now and then with comments of his own – after all, they were supposed to be doing this together, he said. Later Bill did the rounds at the reception, chatting to people enthusiastically, and in the morning at breakfast, he made sure he’d said a proper goodbye to all the new friends he’d made, the learned scholars who had come to the conference. “We did it together” said Bill to Nouwen as they left. As Nouwen reflected on what had happened, he wrote this: In the past, I had always given lectures, sermons, addresses, and speeches by myself. Often I had wondered how much of what I had said would be remembered. Now it dawned on me that most likely much of what I said would not be long remembered, but that Bill and I doing it together would not easily be forgotten. I hoped and prayed that Jesus, who had sent us out together and had been with us all during the journey, would have become really present to those who had gathered in the Clarendon Hotel in Crystal City...

The word temple comes from the Latin templum which literally means a place that is marked out. We get template from it too. It is a shape, a space that is set aside. But it is only a space. On its own it is empty. The point of a temple wasn't the building but what happened inside it...

My wife's maternal grandmother is a saint. She might even qualify to be a Saint according the rules of Roman Catholic Sainthood, except she isn't Roman Catholic. She's a Pentecostal, who loves the Lord with all her heart and seeks to do his will in every way. She's always good for a hug, and without fail, she'd stand up on her tip-toes to whisper in my ear, 'May you grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people.'...

Webster's definition of a sacrifice is the surrender of something of value for the sake of something else. That is a good definition, but it contains more than first meets the eye, as is evident when we look at the concept of sacrifice in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Take, for example, the famous story where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. What is ultimately behind God's invitation to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on an altar?...

Flannery O'Connor understood this truth that with salvation will come death and division. Her story The River gives us a good picture of the risks of baptisms and the dedication of children to the Kingdom of Christ. In the story, a young boy, Bevel, is taken by his baby sitter to a revival meeting and baptism by a river. Bevel is intrigued and asks to be baptized...

"One of my favourite motion pictures is the film Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. For those of you who haven't seen it, it tells the story of C S Lewis, and of his relationship with the American poet Joy Gresham, whom Lewis eventually married. And the story which is conveyed through their relationship is a story of change: a story of moving out from a situation of safety and security into a context of risk, uncertainty, and loss...

Young people often confess to the pain they've caused their parents. They know that they shouldn't lie, shouldn't sneak around, shouldn't snap back with an emotional whip. They're genuinely sorry, truly contrite, but, typically, tears don't come. Life is still too long and too lustrous for that. But now I am too old to reckon how many tears I've seen mothers shed. So often I find myself repeating this old line: no one can love us like family and no one can hurt us like family...

Frankly, the world got along without me quite well before I was here; the academy, and the world, will do fine without me when I am gone. But humility alone is insufficient. What we do in life still counts, yes, counts even to God. So we add the second theological affirmation: that the whole of one's life is an investment in God's future. Maturity in faith is both the willingness to grasp our vocation when the call comes and then the willingness to let it go and trust the providence of God...

include several quotes

We need to be mindful of orders of magnitude. Some categories of violence, like rampage shootings and terrorist attacks, are riveting dramas but (outside war zones) kill relatively small numbers of people. Every day ordinary homicides claim one and a half times as many Americans as the number who died in the Sandy Hook massacre. And…, in most years bee stings, deer collisions, ignition of nightwear, and other mundane accidents kill more Americans than terrorist attacks...

Several years ago, the New York Times reported that a local music teacher came to the Brooklyn Public Library and borrowed a copy of the full orchestral score of Handel’s Messiah. For some reason, the distracted librarian failed to make a record of the loan. Several other requests came for the score, and the library staff spent a good deal of time looking for it. When the day came that the music teacher returned to the library with the score, he placed it on the circulation desk, and was “astonished to hear the librarian spontaneously, joyously, and loudly shouting, ‘The Messiah is here! The Messiah is back!’... Alas, as the Times reported, ‘A few minutes later everyone went back to work.’”...

Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out… He turned. And made the ritual gesture: "Are there any questions?"
 Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence.
"No questions?" Papaderos swept the room with his eyes.
 So. I asked.
"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?" 
The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go. 
Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.
 "I will answer your question." 
Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter...

Knowing that I liked to travel and visit new and different places someone in the family gave me a book entitled Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die. As the title suggests the author travelled around the world with a photographer and produced a beautiful book of places that, in his opinion, were unforgettable and worth visiting

Once upon a time there was a family which decided that it wanted to go away for Christmas to some place warm – the family lived in one of the snow belts. Actually it was only the mother who wanted to go. The kids objected because they wanted to spend Christmas with the friends...

Maurice Cantor and his wife were very well to do people. And they had a little son who was a very nice little boy, six or seven years old. There was an old grandpa who lived with them, too. That was okay, because you should take care of the old grandpa as well. And everybody knows that to be a good Jew, you take care of old people. Anyhow, the trouble with Grandpa was, as he got older, he got a little shaky. And very often the food, instead of going into his mouth, would roll down his bib, because they had to put on a bib like the babies have. And Maurice said to his wife that this was not perhaps the best way to treat Grandpa. Because he used to have a way of funny conversations and he had all the bad habits of somebody who’s trying to wonder where he is right now sometimes. Anyhow, they had a great plan: over the garage where they parked their cars, they fixed up on top of the garage a very nice little place just for Grandpa so he could watch television up there, and be at home up there. But most of all he could eat up there, because whenever they had guests they couldn’t have Grandpa, so they would hide him in the kitchen. So they put him up there and the little boy, every supper, every evening meal, they would fill this little wooden salad bowl with Grandpa’s supper and they would say to the little boy, “Why don’t you go and bring this to Grandpa.” And so he’d go up. And he loved to go up to Grandpa, because Grandpa had all these great stories and he was really fun to listen to. And so the boy and Grandpa would be up there for supper time. And then, when Grandpa finished his meal, the little boy would come down. Well, this was a daily operation, and the little boy loved it, and it seemed to solve all the problems. So one day it was Mr Maurice’s birthday and all his very important and rich friends were going to come and celebrate his birthday. So they asked Grandpa to go up to his room. And the little boy came down just in time for the guests. Oh, it was a great party. Everybody was dressed to the nines and feeling very flashy and intelligent and witty and drinking rare wine. And then they opened the birthday presents. And they were lavish birthday presents, beautiful birthday presents. And everybody was feeling good until the little boy, he said, “Here’s my present, Daddy.” And his father says, “You don’t have to give me anything, you’re my son.” And he said, “No, I’ve been waiting, I want to give you this.” Well, he opens the package and in it is a little wooden bowl. The father said, “Where did you get this, child?” And he said, “I made it myself.” He was so proud of his little bowl. And he said, “Well, what is it for?” And the boy said, “It’s for when you get old and my son is going to bring your supper.”...

I came to know Tommy over 30 years ago when I was a counselor at Camp Swatara. Tommy was a very quiet boy. In fact he never spoke. He was what we call an autistic child. I don't claim to know much about this mental handicap, but as I understand it, an autistic child is missing a vital link in the brain, a connection to the outside world...

Luke's words have at their center a child: surely a prompt to everyone to consider the treatment of children today. What does it mean to cherish and value children? Several years ago a proverbial phrase was popularized through a speech; "It takes a village to raise a child." How true in the best sense of that phrase..." and more info on child

In a neighborhood shelter there was a financial crisis. Grant money that usually supported the shelter had dried up, and the place that many relied on for a daily meal was faced with imminent closure. A local rabbi came by to see the director and asked, “Why are you closing?” “We’re out of money, rabbi,” she said. “Well,” he replied, “then go get some!” She looked at him oddly for a moment and then realized she hadn’t thought about any alternatives. In a month, with the rabbi’s help, seven churches and a synagogue had taken on support of the shelter. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...

Jesus was still in diapers when his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem as the custom was, and that's when old Simeon spotted him. Years before, he been told he wouldn't die till he'd seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out...

In the movie The Bucket List, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star as two cancer patients who become the most unlikely of friends and end up spending three months together — each fulfilling a "bucket list" of things they'd always wanted to do before dying...

There is a story told about a Jewish farmer who, because he was carelessness, had to spend a Sabbath day in his field. Preoccupied with his work, he had let the sun go down without going home. Now, being a pious believer, he was not allowed to travel until sunset the next day...

Several years ago on a series called 30 Minutes, CBS aired a school that had known five losing seasons of their football team. Well, it was this sixth season that they won their first game, and there was everything but celebration going on...

("Among my favorite books are C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I have read them and re-read them several times. These little books were intended for children but they contain volumes of truth that will encourage and entertain readers of all ages. In this series of fantasy stories, Lewis introduces us to four children..." and other illustrations)

("A community of love and sharing. Historically, a strange phenomenon. As ethicist Margaret Farley has noted, 'Though the family has generally been considered to be a major social institution, Christian theology has not addressed it...")

A scholar was conducting a study of an Amish village. The Amish are a branch of the Mennonite church who live in traditional rural villages far from industrialization and technology: no computers, televisions, refrigerators and telephones. In his study of the Amish village school, the researcher noticed that Amish children never screamed or yelled...

Once upon a time two kids went over to church to pray before the new year started. They wanted to thank God for giving them such wonderful parents. I don't know where they got that crazy idea because they weren't particularly devout...

There is an odd little carol which is sometimes sung on this first Sunday after Christmas. It begins: 'There's snow on the mountain and ice on the pond, The Wise Men are home now in the back of beyond. The Shepherd's have left us; the heavens are dumb; There's no one to tell us why Jesus has come...

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone...snow had fallen, snow on snow, in the bleak mid-winter long, long ago...

The Christmas our oldest son was ten, he had asked for a bicycle. Not just any bicycle but a Bandit BMX bicycle. He pointed it out to us one day in the store. That's all he talked about for three months before Christmas. Of course we got the bicycle...

William Willimon, of Duke University, in an Advent meditation writes that we too often emphasize the wrong message at Christmas. He says: 'We prefer to think of ourselves as givers - powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate...

Doug, our sexton, invited the Thursday night reading group to the Cambridge Zen Center to hear the teachings of an American Zen Master. I really had no idea what to expect, but it sounded like an interesting variation on our usual routine, so I encouraged the group to go...

Within Jesus' lifetime and ministry he would have many conflicts with the Pharisees and others concerning the Law of God. Perhaps seeing God's Christ in so helpless a state told Simeon that saving humanity was going to have to go beyond the jots and tittles of the Law...

A woman was driving home on a dark and rainy night. It was very difficult for her to see the road ahead. Seeing the taillights of another car in front of her that seemed to be going in her direction, she decided to follow it. Following the taillights made travelling on that dark road so much easier...

Once upon a time, actually, probably every day, new parents bring their precious bundle home from its birthing place, convinced that their child is the most precious baby in the world and they begin imaging all the great things this child will accomplish...

Early in the fall of the school year my godson Jacob had a very bad day. He got in a heap of trouble. His mother sent him to his room and told to stay there until he could improve his behavior. This that follows is the result of his period of isolation: Memo: To Mom From Jacob...

I said that this story offers us a pattern, one for us to live out and promote. The strange scene in the temple brings together a baby, a young couple, and a pair of old people. Imagine a world where younger adults are not constantly overwhelmed by the duties of daily existence, but go to worship, where they are surprised and transformed by God's loving intentions for them...

"Our friends Scott and Laura Anderson had a time like that just this year. Their four year old daughter was going to play Mary in the preschool presentation during the Sunday School Christmas pageant at their church...

Some years ago there were whispers on Merseyside that the National Front was astirring. Anti- Jewish graffiti had begun to appear. Jews received sinister threats.The synagogues were getting edgy...

I have been struggling-and struggling is the right word-with a remarkable new work of fiction by Richard Powers called In the Time of Our Singing. The book is about an interracial couple who date and then marry after finding each other at the outdoor concert given by Marian Anderson on Easter 1939...

There was a time during World War I when soldiers confronted each other from their respective trenches. It was Christmas Eve. And a German soldier was heard singing, 'Silent Night' in German. British soldiers began to sing back, in English. Soon both sides were singing and an unofficial truce was declared...

Do you remember the excitement of when the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon? When it happened, President Nixon said: 'It's the greatest day since Creation!' Then Billy Graham came on line and reminded him of Christmas and Easter. Philip Yancy reflected on this dialogue by saying...

"It occurs to me that the question with which I began this sermon is the wrong question. Rather than asking "what would you like to do?" perhaps I should be asking "how would you like to be remembered?" What do you want your legacy to be? What shall we write as an epitaph on your tombstone? What should be written on mine?...

This poem was written by an old woman living in a nursing home in Ireland. It was found among her things when she died. What do you see nurses, what do you see? Are you thinking when you look at me? A crabbit old woman, not very wise, Uncertain of habit, with far away eyes, Who dribbles her food and makes no reply When you say in a loud voice- "I do wish you'd try." And forever is losing a sock or a shoe. Who unresisting or not, lets you do as you will, With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill. Is that what you think, is that what you see? Open your eyes, nurse, you're not looking at me. I'll tell you who I am, as I sit here so still, As I use at your bidding, and eat at your will, I'm a small child of ten, with a father and mother, Brothers and sisters who loved one another, A young girl of 16, with wings on her feet, Dreaming that soon now a lover she'll meet. A bride soon at 20, my heart give a leap. Remembering the vows that I promised to keep.

An Indian chief was disturbed about how lazy his braves had been during the hunting season, so he called all the tribe together and announced, 'I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that, because you have been lazy and done little hunting this season, all we have to eat all winter long is clay from the riverbank. The good news is that there is an ample amount of clay to keep us going until next year..

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