Colourful Dreamer

Are you ready to join the party? That is the question our gospel asks us for the next few weeks. Of course, other questions go with that—like what kind of party is it, and when is it? When the early church began, they expected Jesus back tomorrow. And after the Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed, they thought that meant today. But maybe ten years later they were struggling to hold hope in the face of persecution and disappointment. These remain big questions today. When is this party kicking off, and what kind of party is it? In Matthew, Jesus’ last block of teaching is all about these questions, finishing with four parables: the wicked servants, the bridesmaids, the outrageous lumps of money (talents), and the sheep and the goats. Jesus’s parables are not nice stories with neat meanings; they provoked, shocked, disturbed and left room for multiple interpretations. These four are no exception and should be read together, bouncing off each other toward a climax. Together, ...

This Sunday, All Saints Day , we gather with Christians globally to light candles and remember loved ones who have died over the past year. For at least 12 centuries November 1st has been the day Christians have honoured the saints,   firstly all those who died as martyrs, and then all those great people of faith the rest of us look up to and are inspired by. Who are your favourite saints and what do they offer you as you seek to live the gospel. Complementing this is All Souls’ Day on November 2nd, established in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries to remember all people of faith, particularly those we personally grieve. Today we look back on all those who have paved the way for us - especially those we have loved and who loved us, and those who inspire us. As we honour their memory and give thanks for the ways they have blessed us over our lifetimes, we take another step in letting them go, trusting that they now rest in God, as they have always. We do this considering some...

Our reading from Deuteronomy about Moses’s death on Mount Nebo offers us a delightful image of the intimate relationship between God and Moses, and through Moses to the people of God. God takes Moses’s body and buries him—a level of care usually reserved for closest loved ones. While that intimacy was once held by Moses on behalf of the nation, today we are invited into that same closeness as God’s community, knowing we are deeply loved and held in the hardest times. Our gospel reading from Matthew is so familiar might even miss the point. Jesus is still in the temple. Jewish leaders and the Judaean wealthy elite are still trying to undermine his standing. They have one more play. Jesus was not the first rabbi to offer this “new” way of understanding Torah. But it was innovative and is central to his teaching. By bringing together Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, he makes them equally important and the basis for reading the whole of Torah (Law). Many people, then and now, under...

There are some big theological themes at play into today’s readings. They should give us cause to pause and wonder at their implications as we approach election time. The gospel reading is a well-known story that has led Christians over the centuries to declare that religion and politics do not mix. So let’s put it back and take a look. We are still in the temple, but now the long, tense, conversation between Jesus and the privileged Jerusalem Temple elite is on pause. It began when they asked by what authority Jesus did ALL these things: teaching in the temple, healing, forgiving sins, eating with sinners etc…, overturning money changers tables – and more. Now the Pharisees and Herodians, very strange bed fellows, are working together to trap him. Their question, veiled in flattery, is a good question. Jesus will be in serious trouble however he answers, either with the crowd who hate the Romans and their taxes, or with the Romans themselves. Jesus’ response seems simple and clever,...