Celtic Odyssey

Matthew 12.14-21; NLT*: Then the Pharisees called a meeting to plot how to kill Jesus. But Jesus knew what they were planning. So he left that area, and many people followed him. He healed all the sick among them, but he warned them not to reveal who he was. This fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah concerning him: “Look at my Servant, whom I have chosen.    He is my Beloved, who pleases me. I will put my Spirit upon him,    and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not fight or shout    or raise his voice in public. He will not crush the weakest reed    or put out a flickering candle.    Finally he will cause justice to be victorious. And his name will be the hope    of all the world.” This passage is all about hope. The hope that someone will come along that will not follow the violence of the world. That someone will come and show us a better way . Here...

Am I the only one who finds the view that some people have about guns extreme and unsettling? I keep seeing links to articles and videos by some people stating that other people are wanting to remove all guns from law abiding citizens. That all “they” want to do is ban the purchase of firearms. Some are even saying that the Socialist dragon is raising it’s ugly head to devour the Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment. Really? I have not heard a single person of power speak about removing all guns or taking away the right to purchase guns, own guns, or destroy the Second Amendment. This is spin that has gotten way, way, out of control. (I’ll grant that I haven’t heard all of the spin the other way. There may be some people saying we should ban all guns. I’m just saying I haven’t seen it.) All people are talking about is the need for reform . Change . Restrictions . Are we so much more concerned about our personal rights to own a firearm that we’ve forgot the most importan...

14. In the Lindisfarne Community, we are willing to be out on a limb, to be vulnerable. In doing so we always run the risk of being rejected, which is at times an intense form of suffering. Nonetheless, to that we have been called. Jesus was the most vulnerable on the cross and in our discipleship we willingly embrace the cross — to be vulnerable, to be out of control, knowing the freedom that vulnerability brings. Being vulnerable. That’s difficult for some people. Some of us are pretty guarded. We’ve been hurt so deeply that we don’t trust people the way we used to. We’re suspicious of even those who are closest to us. We “know” that they could, at any moment, hurt us again. So, we guard ourselves. We try to be the people we once were, but the damage is too great. It take years before we become trusting people again. Sometimes - a lot of the time - we never trust people again. We remain distant. Guarded. Broken. Some of us have even changed the “Golden Rule” to reflect our new wa...

Thank you, Sara for inviting me to speak this morning. And thank you all for having me. I’ve actually been here a few times before and really enjoyed it. I’d like to start off by telling you about a dream I once had. I used to live in Chickasha and we had a small but prominent Mennonite community there. The men can be identified by their attire and their...beardiness. In my dream, I’m standing in a farmhouse with a Mennonite man. We’re looking out a window into a field. I turn to him because we’re having a conversation yet there’s no sound. When I look back out the window, I see a huge tornado coming right at us. There’s no way out. When I turn to my companion, he has transformed into a monster. I woke up. I told a friend of mine about my dream. She said that it was obvious enough to her what it meant. The Mennonite man represented the church. I represented a challenge to the church. The storm and the monster represented the trouble that would come from both outside and inside the chur...

Matthew 18:21-35 (CEB): Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Should I forgive as many as seven times?” Jesus said, “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan. “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay m...