On Mothers’ Day, we honor our mothers for the gifts of God that they are or were in our lives. They wear so many hats as they nurture us to be the people that we become. Clearly, we are to honor them as the 4th Commandment requires. But in today’s text, it can seem that Jesus is being a tad dishonorable to his mother, Mary. When he asked this question, “Who is my mother?”  it wasn’t that he dishonored her, but he set the stage

This question was not asked by Jesus, but by two angels who watched Jesus' disciples witness his bodily ascension into heaven. This past Sunday, the Rev. Dr. Geordie Ziegler said that the ascension is one of his favorite Christian holidays and one of the most important for the Christian Church. Why? Because the disciples would then have to rely on the power of Jesus' Holy Spirit which lived inside of them and less on his physical presence

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus asked this question of Peter three times.  Do you love me?  And each time, Peter just couldn’t respond in a way that matched Jesus’ expectation of sacrificial love.  Why is this?  I think it was because at this point, before he had been empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter was still very much a carnal believer and not a mature disciple of Jesus Christ.   

If you’ve ever been skunked while fishing, then you exactly how Jesus’ disciples were feeling in our scripture story this week.  They had been out fishing all night and didn’t catch a thing.  That was when the resurrected Jesus met them and cheekily asked them if they had caught anything.  Deep within Jesus’ questions surfaced issues of grief, purpose, and connection.  

Following Jesus' resurrection, two of his disciples encountered Jesus as they walked home from Jerusalem.  They were processing all they had experienced, along with their hopes and dreams.  Jesus asked them this question not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wanted to see if they knew the answer to his question.  What he found was that even some of his closest followers had unmet expectations and misundersta

There is no one else like Jesus who has ever risen from the dead. Jesus is unique among all people, through all times. And Jesus comes to us today asking questions, not because he doesn’t know the answers, but to see if we know the answers ourselves. While each of us come to the Easter Story with our own bias and perspectives, today Jesus challenges us to be more like John, who knew just how deeply Jesus loved him and believed that J

Palm Sunday is the day the Church remembers Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem before going to the cross.  While the Jewish people had one set of expectations for Jesus as Messiah and King, Jesus had a completely different agenda.  It was hoped that he would set them free from Roman oppression, but Jesus came to set them free from sin.  The truth is that sometimes we need to untie our expectations from what God has actually planned. &n

Jesus told his disciples that the world would know that they were his followers by the way they loved one another. This means sometimes going above and beyond to serve others when we’d rather not. Jesus’ question today challenges us at the core when self-centeredness seems to rule the day.

In today’s gospel story, Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. Since he had been buried in the tomb for four days, there was no question in everyone’s mind that he was really dead. “Irrevocably dead” as one commentator put it. When Jesus asked the dead man’s sister if she believed that Jesus could raise him from the dead, she responded, “We know you can do it, not we believ

Jesus’ way is the narrow way, the hard way.  And sometimes his teaching is just plain difficult to understand.  That was especially true with the context behind his question today.  Sometimes all we can do is trust Jesus' words to be true and know that the power of the Holy Spirit will enable us to remain on the journey with him.  In those cases, may we, like Peter, ask, "Who else has the words of eternal life? &nb