Tough words from Jesus

This Sunday's Gospel was a tough one to preach on: fire and brimstone, plus adultery and divorce! Here's my sermon. And you can find the scripture readings here. For me, this Gospel passage connected to the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers about how we should just let our thoughts be thoughts and not let them control us. I was thinking a lot about this book by Benedictine nun Mary Margaret Funk, but didn't specifically reference it in the sermon.

I welcome your comments and reflections. Here's a discussion question to get you started: if you had been preaching this Sunday, what might you have said?

Sermon by the Rev. Kate Ekrem, 6 Epiphany, Feb 13th 2011

Light and salt, Sabeth reminded us last week are what Jesus asks us to be. Bringing illumination and flavor to the world. And being light and salt is not just about doing a certain thing, it’s about being a certain way. A way that Jesus continues to unpack in this next passage from Sermon on the Mount.

Follow Up from Sunday's Adult Forum

We started a discussion yesterday about what we, as Christians, should be doing in response to challenges in the world that we might consider to be issues of social justice, that was precipitated by the ouster of the Tunisian president by public revolt and the current public outcry in Egypt calling for the removal of President Mubarak.

Welcome to Redeemer's new blog

Welcome! This is the home of Church of Our Redeemer's new blog. Our idea is to offer spiritual reflections from our clergy -- Kate, Sabeth, and Ted -- and give our church community a chance to share ideas, via the comments, about living a spiritual life in today's world. We'll also post our sermons and invite you to comment on them to share what was meaningful to you, or what other things it made you think about. We hope you'll subscribe (using the tools on the right) so you can get some spiritual thoughts-for-the-day sent right to your email, phone, or whatever. Enjoy!

Peace and blessings,

Kate

Welcome

Welcome to Church of Our Redeemer’s newest mode of communication! It is our hope that this blog will allow our church community to share inspiration, upcoming calendar events, celebrations, and communicate new programs in an easy paperless manner. Each new post will be “tagged” by a theme, so that our readers can easily access a category of previously published materials. Sermons. Christian Formation. Mission. Music. Celebrations. Stewardship. Please consider subscribing to this blog in a “reader” which allows new posts to be emailed directly to you as they are published.