Genesis 21: 8-12; Romans 6: 1B-11; Matthew 12: 24-39
June 21, 2020


When I hear the name Hagar, my mind goes to the comic strip character, Hagar the Horrible. I knew about him long before I realized that Hagar the Egyptian was a woman featured in the Old Testament account of Abraham.
We should begin by filling in the blanks from last week’s reading where Sarah laughed at the promise that she and Abraham would have a child at their advanced age. You should know that Sarah had convinced Abraham that she would never bear him a child and so had him take a shortcut to fulfill the promise. Abraham had a child with the Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. But after they'd taken matters into their own hands, God did fulfill the promise, Sarah bore Isaac. And we join the story today and discover that Sarah has grown to despise both Hagar and her son, Ishmael.  ​

​Genesis 18:1-15, Romans 5: 1-8, Matthew 9:35-10:8
June 14, 2020
 
 The last line of today’s epistle tells us that, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  God’s love.  It’s a love that certainly exceeds our capabilities to love as human beings.  In fact, in order to find a comparison here on earth, I turn to the love of a dog for its master; perhaps as close as anything to God’s love for us.  
Now I know we have a lot of cat people in the congregation.  So I’ll begin with a cat cartoon Tundra from last week’s Star and Tribune.  A woman has her cat at the pet psychologist and he is giving her his diagnosis, “Your cat is a completely self-absorbed, narcissistic sociopath who demands total human submission…  in other words your cat is totally normal.”

​Genesis 1: 1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20
June 7, 2020
 
On the first night of the protests and rioting over the killing of George Floyd, I found myself wondering, “How can this be?”  The death of yet another black man killed by a police officer brought to my mind the era of lynching; yet that should have been left far in our past.  Also the civil rights battle, while not completely solved, is better.  The age of enlightenment is here, supposedly.  There is no reason for an incident like that to happen.  And yet it did.
I want to share a few words from an article in last week’s Christian Century.  Keep in mind this article was written and submitted long before the world heard of George Floyd.  Dorothy Wells begins, “Few people know the name Michael Donald.  I know that name; he was lynched in my hometown, Mobile, Alabama in 1981.”  Take a second to consider that; 1981!  That’s well within the lifetime of most of us.