My brother David taught me to read at 4 years old – he insisted I would read before the next door neighbor 8 months older than me, the one who let me play touch football with the big kids, the one who taught me to drive using his own car – manual transmission – I […]

Psalm 23 is one of the most familiar passages in scripture. Some of you, like me, had a painting of Jesus tenderly holding a lamb with another sheep looking trustingly up at the Good Shepherd. Some of you, like me, when you attend a memorial service where the 23rd Psalm is read, find yourself mouthing […]

Some scholars think the Gospel of John may have originally ended at ch 20 with the story of Jesus appearing to Thomas. The last few lines of John 20 seem to be a good way to wrap up the gospel: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not […]

Easter doesn’t often fall this close to Earth Day. But these two celebrations coming a day apart invite us to pay closer attention to the holiness of the earth, and the earthiness of Easter. The four gospels offer a different lens of encounters with the resurrected Christ. In Matthew, the resurrection resembles a theophany—with earthquake […]

Jesus acts decisively entering into Jerusalem, but not in the way expected by his followers. In their book, “The Last Week”, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan describe Palm Sunday procession of Jesus entering from one end of Jerusalem while the Roman Empire’s representative, Pontius Pilate, full of imperial power, entering from the other end […]

Today we are looking at two deadly needs – The Need to Look Good & the Need to Keep Score – these two can be intertwined – as all of them can, actually. In Scripture today, we focus on the woman who poured out everything for Jesus without counting the cost or keeping score and […]

Can you think of a time you felt wronged, mistreated, or ignored? Internally, how did that feel? Hurt, angry, resentful, bitter? What scenarios play through your mind of how to respond? Some people want to get even, settle the score. Payback. Revenge. You might feel you have a moral obligation to rectify the situation. Or perhaps the […]

Six years ago, when we moved to Tacoma, I was serving a church in North Seattle and spent three hours commuting back and forth.  I started to notice how grumpy I would be by the time I got to the church I was serving.  All those other drivers on the road – I found myself […]

Excerpts of Acts 15: Paul & Barnabas part ways – The Need to be Right Our Worship theme for Lent is based on a book written by Edward Bear called:  “The Seven Deadly Needs”. Some of these habits or needs can keep us from fully accepting ourselves as God does, or get in the way […]

Our Worship theme for Lent is based on a book written by Edward Bear called:  “The Seven Deadly Needs” –  kind of a spin-off from the ancient “Seven Deadly Sins”.  The Seven Deadly Needs include the Need to Know, to Be Right, to Get Even, to Look Good, to Judge, to Keep Score, and to […]