As a young teenager, my paternal grandmother, Helen Kovar Shuluga, left her home, parents, siblings, and extended family and boarded a ship for the great United States of America. She had no money, no ticket, a small suitcase of clothing, and the clothes on her back. She hid on the ship as a stowaway and was discovered after they set sail. She was ordered to cook in the ship’s kitchen to earn her way here. She never looked back. She never saw her parents or most of her family again.

When I was a youngster, Sundays were very different than the other six days of the week. After church and Sunday School, the big meal was at 12:30, rather than supper time. We ate off the “good dishes” on Sunday. After dinner, we would all jump in the car for a leisurely afternoon drive. My father would just drive aimlessly through the country, admiring the scenery. Most often we would end up at my great-grandmother’s house where many of the extended family members gathered.

In today’s gospel reading, we have a blatant case of sharenting. It’s not enough for Jesus to have his shining moment with Moses and Elijah, but dear old Dad has to interrupt Jesus and his pals by bragging about his Son. “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

It started very early in life… girls wear pink and boys wear blue. Baby dolls and strollers for girls and trucks and toy tools for boys. There were defined roles you were expected to play and fulfill. Young women would marry, have children, and stay at home. The man of the household was to be the bread winner and fix the car.

God is fed up with people who do the rituals, who go through the motions of their chosen religious faith, but who don’t let any of those ritual practices sink into their hearts and minds. They don’t let the rituals impact their lives.

The challenge is to stand at the sink with your hands in the dishwater, fuming over a quarrel with your spouse, children at your back clamoring for attention, the radio blatting the bad news from Bosnia, and to say “God is here, now, in this room, here in this dishwater, in this dirty spoon.” – Philip Simmons

Churches have been splitting since before the Great Schism of 1054, which led to the break in communion between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. A few centuries later, the Protestant Reformation led to further splintering. Today, the fracturing of the church continues, and some people joke that Christians have a strange approach to math: They actually multiply by division!

Writing a personal mission statement allows us to put our answer in a statement short enough that we can use it to explain our whole life to someone in a brief encounter on an elevator. Because, you know, people are always asking about our purpose in life while we’re on an elevator.

After years of attempting to have his name removed from church rolls and baptismal records, Mr. LeBouvier learned that this simply was not possible. He then decided to take the church to court. A magistrate found in his favor, but the church appealed. It was not possible to erase history, they argued, nor to deny that a sacred rite had taken place, vows and eternal declarations made.

I was a bit taken aback when a former church employee said to me, “You really are very socially awkward! I’m surprised at that, because when you are in the pulpit, you come alive.”

Studies show that singing to a yet-to-be-born child can have a profound influence on him or her. Studies have shown, for example, that fetuses can sense audio vibrations and rhythms early in pregnancy — so much so that the baby is able to recognize the parents’ voices right after birth. A song or a story can imprint a child’s mind even before he or she is born and can have a lasting influence.

When Bueno saw his family’s name mentioned in the local newspaper, he was not happy. In fact, he was downright devastated. He had spent nearly his whole life trying to escape his family and so far had succeeded; the last thing he wanted was to read an article with the headline “Denver’s Biggest Crime Family.”

Sorry. It’s the First Sunday of Advent and none of today’s texts are about you. None of this morning’s scripture panders to your exaggerated opinion of your moral and spiritual potency. There’s nothing in any of the scriptures for you to think, for you to feel, or for you to do. I know that makes you uncomfortable.

Very few of us crawl out of bed on Sunday morning, stumble to the shower, wolf down some Pop-Tarts and then drive to church because we ache to know more about the liturgical seasons. We want a word that speaks to us, no matter what Sunday the calendar says it is.

Did they know the terms and conditions of the faith they had embraced? They checked the “accept” box, and there they were: a religious minority in Thessalonica with a misunderstanding about something really, really major: The second coming of Jesus Christ.

In our culture today, that word “Christian,” in too many people’s minds, stands for everything Jesus didn’t stand for.

When I arrived, my mother was at the kitchen table with the funeral director already making funeral plans. My dad’s brother and sister were also at the table. Brenda was on the love seat sobbing. Diane was on the couch just staring into space. Suddenly, I felt like I was sucker punched in the gut. It knocked the wind right out of me.

God, I thank thee that I go to a church that is fairly open minded, that I do my part for Habitat for Humanity, give a pint of blood to the blood bank each month, and give away twice as much of my salary as the average Christian.

The parable of the widow and the unjust judge is, in my humble opinion, a very troubling and disturbing parable. If I had been Luke’s editor, I would have suggested he either rewrite the parable or omit it from his Gospel altogether. But there it is, stuck right at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter. Too many people have seen it there to try and get rid of it now, so we have to deal with it.

The extent to which we praise and give thanks to God is in direct proportion to our ability to “see” God and God’s gracious actions toward us. My fear is that all of the blessings around us become routine. We don’t give them much thought and miss them altogether.