Father Snort

People were and are in need of the Living Water which Jesus offers and is. Jesus is the living water which to give strength to the weary, to give growth to our souls, to satisfy our thirst, and to carry us safely along our way, and fills us with life which never ends. We serve as beacons to others to guide them to the living water of Jesus. They need us, and we need each other.

Being born from above, we become like children again...spiritually speaking. We are God's children, and being born from above, we accept and live into who we truly are. As children, we delight in the world with childlike wonder; we trust in God; we need no great accomplishment to be of value. Our value comes simply because we are God's children.

Jesus could do anything he wanted, and yet what he wanted most was to do the will of God. He trusted in God's way, even in the wilderness, to guide him, rather than rely on his own spectacular abilities.

They aren't really dead are they, the saints? Through Jesus' resurrection, we are granted resurrection which we celebrate at Easter. During Lent, we remember our mortality and sin, taking a good honest look at ourselves. For the same reason, Lent is a joyful season.

Sacramental moments, when God is suddenly revealed to us, are blessed times when we are encouraged, renewed, and sometimes afraid as God's life and love is made manifest to us. These moments are not meant to last forever; we aren't meant to stay in these moments. We are meant to go, strengthened by these moments, to love and serve others in Jesus' name.

We're defined not by what we do, but by who we love and those who love us. From Genesis, we are defined by our relationship to God and each other. We are to be the beauty of Love we were made to be.

God placed within us the ability to be forces for good in the world. To live into our potential as forces for good, there are things we simply must give up. Hatred, looking upon others for the purpose of arousal, living only for ourselves. We are called to live as salt and light, as repairers of the breach.

Jesus sets us free to go in peace. He shows up at any time and in any way, offering for us to lay down our burdens (or the things to which we have enslaved ourselves) and become a new creation, following him and his way of life.

A narrative of American blessing is that each generation will be blessed more than the one before it through greater wealth...basically more stuff, the goal being to alleviate suffering. People now rush about trying to fulfill this narrative and some acquire a great deal, but through these efforts, we don't achieve the blessings of love, faith, hope, peace, confidence, and contentment. As disciples of Jesus, "fishers of people", our net is the Gospel of Jesus and his way of life, peace amidst suffering, contentment without great wealth, and confidence of eternal life in God even in death.

Come and see! Children love saying these words to anyone who will hear about things that excite them. Jesus' early disciples had this same exuberance concerning Jesus. That seems lacking nowadays. For what are we looking in Jesus? What do we love about Jesus? What makes us want to say "come and see?"

In Baptism, we are not made perfect. God doesn't need us to be. God sees and loves us, and God takes our messiness the crud of our lives and redeems it all, to partner with him in healing the world.

Matthew told the story of Jesus' life as fulfilling scripture and in many ways as reliving the formation of Israel. It was a story heard before, the story of the Gospel, the story God wove into the fabric of reality: Creation, Fall, Judgement, Redemption, Re-creation. We live out this story, asking God to redeem and finish our stories.

God is powerful and mighty, but more importantly, God is love and relationship. God came to us in the loving act of the birth of a baby. God will one day restore all of creation. In the meantime, we get to live out the love of God in Jesus.

We're not supposed to put God to the test, meaning make a bargain that if God does something amazing, then we will believe in him. We are encouraged, however, to trust in and believe in God. Put God to the test in that way; let your belief in God be real enough to bless your life.

In the Kingdom of Heaven, the rich and powerful don't kill with impunity. In the Kingdom of Heaven, those who do can be forgiven through Jesus by letting go of the selfishness and inhumanity that lets them think they can kill with impunity.

The joyous affair of asking Jesus to burn away the chaff in our lives, i.e. asking offering up to Jesus our protective covering, our fears, insecurities, masks, anger, past hurts, etc...this joyous affair is Advent. A season where we ask God to help us become love, become more fully human.

We're told to wait for Jesus' return and the restoration of all creation. Not generally the biggest fan of waiting, I find that waiting for Jesus' return is intended to be a joyous, hopeful affair. We slow down to draw near to God in prayer. We slow down to realize our hope and joy. We slow down to realize and soothe the suffering in the world.

We don't "go to church". We are the church, and we go to corporate worship on Sundays. Then, we live as the church the rest of the time...if we live with Jesus as Lord, with Jesus as Torah for our lives.

Jesus predicted that the temple would fall...not surprising given Israel's occupation by Rome - he simply saw the facts on the ground, and encouraged the people to be faithful anyway. Discipleship of Jesus is shrinking; the institutional church is shrinking. Let's go to work anyway, living intentionally as disciples of Jesus.

Like a baby can't know what life after birth is like, neither can we know what life after death is like. We trust and know that is will be really good.