What’s your plan for this Sunday, preachers? If you are in the USA, how are you managing expectations when a big national holiday falls on Sunday? For others, what current event is influencing your sermon writing this week? How do we stay true to the gospel, and offer people hope? Where do we find hope these days?
Diane Strickland offers some thoughts on the RCL passages this week, finding a theme of crossroads intersecting all of the readings. Cathy Kowley and Julia Seymour offer some beautiful Worship Words for this Sunday, as well.
As for me, I’m trying to listen to Jesus as he sends his disciples out to spread the Good Jesus News. “Pack light,” he seems to be telling me. Keep it simple. Jesus’ short packing list reminds me of advice from a wise principal when I started my first teaching job: “Don’t try to teach five-year-olds in one year everything it took you four years of college to learn.”
How are you ‘packing light’ this week, preacher friends? Let’s share ideas and encouragement in the comments. I’ll be praying for you!
Rev. Jo Anne Taylor is an Evangelical Covenant Church pastor serving in the United Methodist Church. She blogs at pastorsings.com and she likes to sing (just not in close proximity to others at this time).
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I am ministering in Canada so our “independence” day is actually tomorrow, July 1, known as Canada Day, and will probably not be celebrated very much in light of all the discoveries that continue to be made of graves of Indigenous children at various residential schools. This is a very difficult and shadowy part of our past. Catholic, United Church, Anglican and Presbyterian churches all ran residential schools, some only had a few while others had a greater number. We are all complicit, not just one denomination. So as I read Mark’s gospel and hear how the disciples (us) are called to go into the community and accept hospitality, I’m hearing it as our need during turbulent times as Canadians are experiencing, to just be with those most affected, and sit with them. Don’t worry about food or anything else, for God is about to feed us and hopefully enable us to feed them as we listen and just be. Wherever you are tomorrow, July 1, whether Canadian or not, please wear orange and remember Every Child Matters. Years ago, when an Indigenous woman was heading off to school, her mother made her an orange blouse to wear but those who ran the school made her change into something more “appropriate” and destroyed her blouse. She was devastated and when she began to retell of this experience as an adult, it was encouraged to wear orange on September 30 as a way of speaking out against racism and bullying. So that’s where I’m headed at the moment.
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Holy Spirit guide and comfort you as you guide and comfort others. Orange it is tomorrow!
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I am not actively preaching anymore, so I haven’t been doing much writing. But I hope to have a piece posted to my blog by Sunday on seeking the truth and finding freedom (John 8:31 – 32).
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I hope you will share a link with us here. Blessings on your writing!
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Most certainly!
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Here are my thoughts for tomorrow – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2021/07/03/to-seek-freedom-and-truth-we-must-ask-why/
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For the past decade we’ve been hearing Simon Sinek urge us to “start with ‘why.’” Thank you for connecting that question to the desire for God’s truth to make us free, one and all. Blessings on your ministry!
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