Fifth sunday

Today's Link
From the Backwoods

Saying for the day
Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them... he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?" God said, "I did do something. I made you." ~Author Unknown

Picture of the Day

It is the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany and we are moving toward the Transfiguration and the end of the season of Epiphany. In the liturgical churches the text for today is Mark 1:29-39.
The text has a healing and then multiple healings. The light which is Christ now touches more and more lives. More and more people have to decide to walk in the light or away from it.
It seems logical that the people who put the texts together for Epiphany wanted us to see this continuing on going spreading of the light as we move toward the ultimate Epiphany which is the Transfiguration.
But here I have to make a confession. I almost never preached this text according to its liturgical content. There were two things that distracted me.
The first is that Peter had a mother-in-law. That means the first Pope was married. For some reason that always struck me funny. I never preached about it. But it still colored the way I saw the text.
The second is Peter’s mother-in-law herself. She reminded me first of my grandmother and then of a whole group of older ladies in my parish. I could see Grandma getting out of a sick bed to make soup for Tom to bring to a sick friend. She raised chickens to give away eggs. She had a raspberry patch so she could make pies that somebody else ate. She lived to serve. So did these ladies in my parish. One of them served so many funeral coffees that I had to check the kitchen the day of her funeral to be sure she wasn’t there. They lived to serve.
That’s what I saw in this text a lady healed to serve. That’s what all Christians are in some sense. Jesus has healed us from the cancer of sin. We are back on our feet. Now we can serve. So that’s what I preached.
If your one of those nice people who read my blog but don’t believe in Jesus serving is still a good thing. It makes your part of the world just a little better.
In any case it was a poor liturgical sermon but I still preached it in one form or another every three years when the text came up.
Just don’t tell my Bishop.

News from Pigeon Falls

The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal.
Herman is back from Marquette and went to the early service this morning. He is having trouble handling the way people look at him. He knows he is not a super hero. He went to the parsonage right after the service.
Oops , of course, knows what happened but she and he play the same as always. Today they are building a doll house from a kit.
Pastor Joan is preaching on the Gospel and the sermon is entitled :” After the Miracle”. What do you do when you have been healed, or when you have seen a healing ? She wants people to see that every time God pours some light into our life we must either embrace it or walk away from it.
Tommy UK is an acolyte this morning. He has not shared with anyone the confusion he feels. He doesn’t know why he took the rock and skipped school last Monday. He had forgotten that he had the rock. He could not understand how he gave power to Herman but he knew that he had. The entire event was something of a blur to him. He simply didn’t know who to talk to about it. Eino doesn’t believe in this stuff. His parents would freak out. Who can he talk to? Perhaps, Mrs. Trumble would listen and help him sort it all out.

Wrap UP

Another almost warm day. We got above freezing again. My oxygen was in the low normal range. Life is good. Went to Church and Pastor Steve preached on the end of the gospel lesson so the sermon was on prayer. A very good sermon I might add. My daughter lead the Sunday school in a review of what they had learned about the calling of the disciples then joined Pastor Steve in a puppet sermon. There was the annual meeting which started with a slide and movie presentation that contained a lot of the pictures I had taken and even a shot of my electric train that Jeff took. It was just one great morning, A number of people commented on my hair cut in a nice way. This is a great Church. In the afternoon I worked on the church website and used some of what I learned during the slide show to improve it a bit.I am going to have to spend some time learning a new way of doing things.Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA

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