Psalm 95:1-7a
Proper 29A
[…] in Lent was assigned for Sunday, March 15, and that was probably the last in-person gathering of most churches for a long time to come as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began right then. What followed was a wrenchingly tough year worldwide. Infections, deaths, fear, racial unrest in especially the U.S., a fraught presidential election […]
Mark 13:1-8
Proper 28B
[…] complete stop to it by ushering in a new heaven and earth. Jesus’ words of warning speak to our present. Here we are, still dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, and what he describes in verses 5 to 8 sound like a description of our reality. People are being led astray from getting the vaccine […]
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Lent 5B
[…] wrote on this text (almost a year and a half ago), no one could have imagined where we would be today. No one had ever heard about COVID-19 and the havoc it would wreak on the world. No one would have believed a prediction about the fracturing of American democracy by a contentious political […]
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Lent 1C
[…] sounds suspiciously like the kind of traps terrorists like to spring on the unsuspecting. Talk of a “deadly pestilence” can now make us think only of the COVID-19 pandemic. Talk of terrors in the night sounds like a description of burglaries, rapes, and murders. These days there is fear aplenty for all of us. […]
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Proper 5B
The COVID-19 global pandemic has taken away more things than we can count. It has robbed countless people of their lives and livelihoods, as well as mental and physical health. But one loss that’s easy to overlook is our loss of funerals and memorial services that are attended by more than about 10-15 people. […]
Psalm 23
Proper 23A
[…] Lent and the second time a couple weeks after Easter. The first time was before we knew the world was going to get turned upside-down due to COVID-19 and the second time was in an upside-down world that even then few of us could imagine would last in some fashion all the way into […]
Psalm 119:129-136
Proper 12A
Perhaps this would feel striking at any moment. But during this COVID-19 time and all that we have experienced in recent months, parts of this snippet of the longest psalm feel particularly odd. We have been living in largely unprecedented circumstances for most of 2020 and certainly since early March. Governors and mayors in […]
Psalm 147:12-20
2nd Sunday after Christmast C
As we lurch into 2022 after another difficult year globally, we realize with a sense of startlement that we are technically now entering Year 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple years ago not a few of us hoped the worst of it would not last 3 weeks. Even 3 months seemed hard to […]
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost C
COVID-19. Has anything in our experience ever made us think as much about the act of respiration, of breathing, than the global pandemic we have been in for over two years now? Way back in 2006 I visited Japan. At that time there was no particular flu bug worrying anyone. Yet I was […]
Ephesians 6:10-20
Proper 16B
[…] mitigate its affects have caused great physical, mental and even spiritual suffering. They’ve left us exhausted. What’s more, just when we seemed to have turned a corner, COVID-19 seems to be coming roaring back, cleverly dressed in new variants. Most people I know are doing the best they can to live within what is […]
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