Let me start with a question: why do people worship, be it in person or, right now, via a screen? Maybe people feel connected to that great cloud of witnesses, which transcends time and space, whenever they worship. Maybe these services feed them through the familiar words of song and prayer. And maybe they […]
Good teacher, what do I have to do? The man who is asking this question in today’s gospel lesson is a man who is used to doing. We hear he is a man with many possessions, so presumably he is someone who has to do something in order to acquire or at least maintain […]
Today is an important day on the German calendar: October 3rd is German Unity Day. This national holiday was established in 1990, on the day the German reunification was ratified by the German president – not quite a year after the wall between East and West Germany started to come down and the […]
On our recent trip to Europe, my husband Fred and I must have visited around 40 churches. We saw 10 in Cologne alone – and, yes, there are quite a few interesting churches besides the famous cathedral. We saw cathedrals – and ancient humble village churches. We saw any style: Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, […]
As my husband Fred and I were planning our recent trip to Germany, Fred insisted on going to a few places: Cologne and Trier HAD to be on our itinerary. But he also wanted to go to Bingen on the banks of the Rhine River. He wanted to pay homage to the fascinating 12th […]
Yesterday we commemorated the 20th (!) anniversary of 9/11. Can you believe it’s been 20 years? On that fateful day in 2001, 4 commercial airliners were hijacked by Muslim extremists. 3 of them plowed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The 4th […]
Modern medicine is amazing. Just think about how many illnesses can be treated today, which would have been debilitating or maybe even fatal just a hundred year ago. My husband, who has type 1 diabetes, often says that he probably would not have survived very long, had he lived at the beginning of the […]
Today I want to talk about food. What we eat says a lot about where we are coming from, what our background is, how affluent we are. Food is culture. One of the great things being in the Bay Area is that we have the chance to taste so many different foods from […]
A couple of weeks ago, the Pacific Northwest experienced an unprecedented and also relentless heatwave that lasted for more than a week. In British Columbia, a new heat record of 121 degrees Fahrenheit – or 50 degrees Celsius – was set. Portland, Oregon, broke the heat record three days in a row, topping out […]
California almost 24 years ago, I was going through a pastoral residency program back in Northern Germany, and I lived in a small rural community called Dötlingen. Now Dötlingen was and still is a picture book kind of village, with an oak tree in the village center that is more than 1,000 years old, half-timbered […]
The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’, and if we go by that definition, today’s gospel story is anything but good news. Here we are in the midst of summer, when everything is supposed to be more easygoing than usual, and our lectionary throws such a heavy story at us! So today we heard the […]
Jesus has to make this experience as he returns to his hometown of Nazareth after a year or so of life on the road – a new life as a rabbi and healer, a new life as the Son of God proclaiming the kingdom of heaven come near in word and deed. A new […]
Most of us have been given the gift of 5 senses: sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. These are the channels through which we experience the world, and connect with the world. And those senses are something to be truly thankful for. Now which of our 5 senses, do you think, is the most […]
Today is the first Sunday after what the State of California calls a ‘full reopening’ after 15 months of restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And though this ‘full reopening’ has a little asterisk attached to it – there are still settings like healthcare facilities, any facility involving children, and mass transit, which will […]
Jesus is coming home. And his family is not happy. In today’s gospel story, it becomes very clear that Jesus and his family – mother, brothers, and sisters – don’t agree on his new way of life as the Son of God. He’s an embarrassment to them, tainting the family’s good name and reputation […]
Today is the Sunday of the Holy Trinity, the day we honor God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And I would like to introduce you to a woman who saw this trinity reflected in all of creation: Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in the 12th century AD in what today is Germany and today […]
The Germans have the following proverb: ‘Alles Gute kommt von oben’, which translates to, ‘all that is good comes from above’. And this proverb comes straight from the Bible, from the letter of James, the first chapter, to be exact; and this passage refers to the good gifts God, who supposedly is enthroned […]
You may have noticed that today’s gospel lesson talks about love – a lot. The word ‘love’ in some form or another is mentioned 9 times in 9 verses, to be exact. Today is also Mother’s Day, a day we hear and talk a lot about love. So let me begin with a story […]
Today I would like to invite you to join me on a road through the wilderness. A road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza, to be exact. It is around the year 35 AD. On this road through the wilderness, we meet Philip. He’s been trudging along this road for a couple of days, […]
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia! This past February, a curious story from Down Under made the news: a sheep was found in a forest in Australia that hadn’t been shorn in years. Wild sheep don’t grow such enormous fleeces of wool – and, like many other animals, wild sheep shed their […]
