Church Blog

Why start the New Year at the end? Today is the Church’s New Year’s Day—the first day of Advent, and so the first day of the new church calendar.  It’s the first day of the third year of our cycle of readings (year C, that is), a year that features the Gospel according to Luke, who was a fabulous teller of the life of Jesus.

So you’d think we’d start this season with the beginning of Luke’s gospel, no?

Adjusting to the Light

(by Miller Williams)

—air —air! I can barely breathe …aah!

Whatever it was, I think I shook it off.

Except my head hurts and I stink: Except

what is this place and what am I doing here?

Brother, you’re in a tomb.  You were dead four days.

Jesus came and made you alive again.

Lazarus, listen, we have things to tell you.

We killed the sheep you meant to take to market.

We couldn’t keep the old dog, either.

I once presided at a funeral in Los Angeles in which the beautiful passage we heard from the Song of Solomon was the first reading. The adult children chose it knowing that their father understood it as a love song from God.  And isn’t that what we as Christians understand life to be?: a love song from our creator.  If we truly understood life this way, not just as a gift, but as a gift formed, offered and held in love, would we not value the works of our lives (and that of others) more highly?

August 19, 2012

Proper 15b

The Rev. Julia Wakelee-Lynch

“To be hungry is to be human. Not to be hungry is to be dead.”