(Luke 3:15-17, 21-22) A young girl named Joanne got her first job at the tender age of nine. She and her sister cleaned a little Anglican church down the street from their home in England. … She was baptised on July 31, 1976, her eleventh birthday, sprinkled at the font of St. Luke’s Church. She would go on the share her birthday with the main character of a book she would later write. Joanne Rowling, better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, gave birth to the boy who lived, Harry Potter….
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista discusses Luke 1:39-45(46-55) and the power of words: “It is into this world, full of hurtful, painful, broken words, that the Word made flesh decided to enter one fateful day long ago. And it is this world, full of our pain and our loss, that the Word made flesh is preparing to enter even now.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista considers what it means to find hope in the apocalypse (Mark 13:1-8): “One of the most popular stops in Israel is a fortress named Masada. It is high up on the Judean desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. In the first century BC, Herod the Great built himself a palace there on a mesa, fortified its walls and made it nearly impenetrable. And yet for all its fortification, its vast food store houses, its complex aqueduct system and ingenious engineering, it is the location of a major defeat, the last stand of a host of Jewish rebels, finally fed up with imperial Roman rule.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on Mark 10:35-45: “The way of Christ is not simply a matter of getting into an exclusive club. It is a matter of servant leadership and sacrifice, a matter of commitment in the thick of resistance.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on Job 1:1; 2:1-10: “Before Senator Pastore sat a soft-spoken Presbyterian minister who was convinced of the value of public programming. This man had recently premiered a children’s show with low production value… Before the Senate committee, he articulated his mission as clearly as he did in every one of his shows: ‘if we can only make it clear in public television that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great surface for mental health.'”
We meet Jesus today in an extraordinarily human moment. Extraordinary only because of how ordinary it is; how very human Jesus seems, given our assumptions about how the son of God behaves. Today Jesus is tired….
(Mark 7:24-37)
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista considers the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in today’s gospel reading (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23): “The Pharisees were actually part of a reform movement in their day and age. They were trying, like Jesus and his followers, not to burden people with the law but to bring the law into their daily life, to help the everyday person find meaning in it… Both Jesus and the Pharisees were trying to interpret the law in the light of their current situation, not demanding observance for its own sake.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 and the endurance of wisdom: “We are complicated people, and each day we are given choices. We require wisdom to do not just that which is convenient but that which is right. Will we seek after God’s wisdom?”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on John 6:1-21: “In Islam, the pilgrim or believer is often imagined as a bird with two wings: one of the wings is fear, one of the wings is fear. In order to make her journey through life, the believer must hold these two in tension.”
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista considers Mark 6:1-13: “What kind of person is a prophet? Abraham Heschel had something to say about that… He describes a prophet as a person concerned with God’s involvement not just in the big events but in the particular circumstances of day-to-day existence.”