St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

IV Lent A

{in the parable, Jesus heals a blind man. Confusion ensues.}

I recently was at the museum looking at these different visual puzzles. There are some where a single dot in the middle of a series of lines causes other dotes to magically appear in the diagram. The dots aren't there, but the eyes put them inbetween the different line. you have probably seen the picture of the older woman that is also, if examined from a different angle, the neck of a younger woman. Or of a rabbit.

III Lent A

John 4:5-42
Romans 5:1-11 "Now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God." Now - we can seek reconciliation with those who we might kill, thereby saving ourselves.
Exodus 17:1-7

Wrath. Often in scripture, a reader gets the sense that the God one is encountering is not the meek God we might see in Jesus. It is not a nice, sweet pollyanna who lets their opponent win to encourage their self-esteem. The person, the being, the essence, of the object of our attention, our GOD, is drawn to be severe and often angry.

Matthew Chapter 17

I’ve often been fascinated by the greek workd “metamorphe” which is translated “transfiguration.” I wouldn’t guess that it has to do with “metamorphosis” the change of the shape, but there seems to be some major change, some revelation about who Jesus is. I have, in past sermons, used butterfly as a metaphor. It reminds me, in part, of Nabakov’s work on them.

“We are all butterflies” could be a sermon. A bad one.