Faith, Grace, and Hope

Jonah 3:10- 4:11; Matthew 20:1-16                         The main points of today’s lessons can be summed up in about 3 minutes. Context for Jonah: the Hebrew prophets and the Hebrew people are not holding up their end of the covenant with God, in which they are blessed as the people who reveals God’s mercy to the world. Context for Matthew: Jewish Christians and early adopter-Gentile Christians are not happy when it turns out that those who are new to the faith receive the exact same level of blessing as they do. The modern upshot for us: God’s grace is not fair, earned, or distributed as expected. We are both the beneficiaries the expected and mandatory reporters of these facts.             So, that’s it.             Except that it’s not. That’s not actually enough. I am guessing that if I poll most of you hear, we would agree that God’s grace is open to all. We would acknowledge that we have some responsibility to spread that news. The truth is, though, that there ar

You may have noticed that I haven't posted much lately. I've been doing some extemporaneous (no notes) preaching. I've also had some other things going on as well in my life. I actually haven't been reading as much lately either and the absence of that is really starting to tug on me in some not-so-subtle ways.  A friend of mine says, "Writers write."  Truth.  It can be very difficult, though, to jump back in because that first rusty post is like the first slow painful walk or run in the start of an exercise program.  I thought I would go to the One-Minute Writer today for a prompt. Just writing for sixty seconds, or walking for 10 minutes, is a start.  Today's prompt is a doozy:  How would the world be different without you in it? Here we go.  I suppose the short answer is to look at this question from the point of view of if I hadn't been born. Thus, all other things being the same, my parents would have had three children. My sister w