Acts 14:1-20 Paul and Barnabas in Iconium The same thing occurred in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace by granting signs and wonders to be done through them. But the residents of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, and some with the apostles. And when an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to maltreat them and to stone them, the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country; and there they continued proclaiming the good news. Paul and Barnabas in Lystra and Derbe  In Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been cri...

Beloved, let us love one another. Today God offers you a chance to redeem your salvation, so that Easter did in fact happen for you. You may be seated. Beloved, let us love one another. Jesus said the First Commandment is this, “‘Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echod,’ Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; the Second Commandment is its equal in every way, in fact they are one and the same: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” Why do you suppose we need a law like this? It is because we live in a world of hatred, not a world of love. Beloved, let us love one another.  “We confess that we have sinned against thee in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved thee with our whole heart. We have not loved...

A good friend* with a knack for finding these things sent me this familiar picture, which at the time showed up in the Apalachicola Times . In our Apalachicola days, we had a Blessing of the Fleet as part of our annual Florida Seafood Festival the first Saturday of November every year. The town is crowded, a parade, booths in the park offering all manner of seafood, time to stuff yourself. I don't know how it is now, but Saturday late morning the town's ministers who wanted to participate met at an agreed place, that year 1986 we met in the rectory at St Patrick Catholic Church, Father Chuck of StPatrick our host, Rev Don MacMillan of 1st UMC, and I of Trinity Episcopal, together with Fr Chuck's bishop, whose name slips my mind. We met, visited a bit, then paraded down to the riverfront, led by an acolyte. One year my grandson Nicholas carried the cross for us as I recall, must have been November 1993, which returns to mind for my own reasons.  Anyway, someone snapp...

We now begin Luke's stories of Paul's famous missionary journeys, Barnabas and John called Mark starting out with him. We shall see how those relationships develop.  This is an origin of the tradition that the anonymous Gospel according to Mark was written by this John Mark whom Luke reports being with Paul early on. If you have an opinion on this, the authorship of Mark, let it be your own rational thoughts and not something your childhood Sunday school teacher told you as absolute fact, naively passing rumors on down through the ages!  An exciting feature of Luke's stories is that Paul and friends are constantly encountering trouble, not to mention having to deal with strange individuals. Acts 13:1-12 Barnabas and Saul Commissioned Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the ...

There she sits under infrared light (that does not bother her because it is undetectable to Osprey) at 201804270309 EDT, don't see him, and checking in several times a day I've not yet seen one bring fish to the other. A day or so ago I did watch as he brought a large bowed stick and tucked it at the right side of the nest's top rim, but it's not there now. A fine nest stick, I wonder what they did with it, or maybe the wind took it away, IDK. Here for the Saturday afternoon funeral of a dear longtime Apalachicola friend, we are in our favorite motel, Water Street Hotel & Marina, right on Scipio Creek. Life is Good at 7H, but also here, not only because it's returning home of sorts to life as it was for us from July 1984 through September 1998, but seemingly also because here anymore, any lid is lifted off any pressure-cooker sense of the Life that is Good. In my life I have found that whoever said it is wrong, you can  go home again, given that you re...

Something we are most likely to pick up from the story below is at the end, putting to death the guards who were charged with keeping Peter; and it does indeed speak to the cruelty of the age. But then it has long been military practice to charge guards with their lives at stake for doing their duty. In wartime, a guard caught asleep at his post might well be shot because such dereliction of duty could allow the enemy to attack and slaughter all the men who had their trust in him while they slept. In other news, we still see Herod's meanness in executing James von Zebedee. Note that when Peter says to "tell this to James ..." he would have been talking about James the brother of Jesus, who, along with Peter, played an overseeing role in the early church. DThos+     Acts 12:1-19 James Killed and Peter Imprisoned About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. After he saw ...

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, the sky has already gone from predawn gray to pink and now coming up light blue - - which indicates a higher humidity, I suppose, 60F and 85% and I'd go outside and get a picture but that my socks would get wet. Wounded Warriors at PCB for their twice yearly (is that biennial or semi-ennial?) visit. I appreciate them and also Bike Week when thousands of motorcycles are here, seems like mostly Harleys, and the Harley dealer at PCB is swamped with happy bikers and so is Hunt's Oyster Bar here in StAndrews. In other news, a young golfer looks at a goose nest and the goose attacks him as he runs, tripping and falling and the goose goes for him. Good lesson there. We often, and especially the cats, were dive-bombed by nesting birds over the years, but the only time a serious bird had a go at me was the swans around the lake at Defuniak Springs once when there with the BayHigh band for a festival and wandered too close to the swans d...

Story for today, those who started what would be the Christian Church realizing early that the God of Israel was opening himself to everyone, gentiles as well as Jews. What does Luke mean when he quotes Peter saying "ἡμῖν πιστεύσασιν ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν" "... we having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ"? It isn't the same as Paul's phrasing about "having the faith of Jesus," Luke speaks of Peter having faith IN (on, upon) Jesus. Luke is writing Acts at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century A.D., is this wording any sign of a developing higher christology in the church? IDK. Also, the issue about Judaization, requiring gentiles to become Jews (circumcision and obedience to the Law of Moses) evidently is not yet an issue (but will be when Paul comes upon the scene!). Acts 11:1-18 Peter’s Report to the Church at Jerusalem Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepte...

Easter at 7H, so the lilies think this morning. For all the stuff, it's still my weblog, at least until Blogger cuts me off. And for all TGBC and my comments, the usual +Time chatter continues to mix in, sometimes, as today, political or demographic, a link to an article that says it precisely, calling it "existential anxiety" and a portrait of the term:  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/existential-anxiety-not-poverty-motivates-trump-support/558674/  .  We are where we are because we are afraid; afraid of what we see, afraid that what we did to others in creating our society is now being done to us, as indeed it is.  Everyone fears being the powerless bottom of the barrel, especially who are already there, unable to have seen, ἴδωσιν Mark 9:1, ὁράω - - to see, perceive, realize, understand - - that it has come with power. The slogan is to be Great Again, "Great" as in When we comfortably  knew there w...

Live osprey cam, he's looking all around while she sits keeping three eggs warm. Yesterday I watched her stand up, adjust the eggs, nestle back down in various positions while he was away. I don't suppose she's gazing adoringly at him, do birds do that, IDK. The website says osprey nests may weigh 200 pounds. Yesterday I watched her, as she sat facing me, shred a piece of wood or something, making it into soft material. Sunday after church: best cheese & chocolate event imaginable, great variety of cheeses and I tasted the most delicious red velvet cake ever, cupcake size. Home to 2/3 martini and the tiny bit of cheese I brought home. Late lunch: perfect hamburger of 97% beef, med-rare on toasted w/w bun, mayo, bit of cheddar, slice tomato, thin slice raw onion. Afternoon, watched The Lost Battalion and started A Bridge Too Far but which is WW2 and doesn't fit the book I'm reading; earlier watched The Dirty Dozen , a lousy movie even with couple star actors...

The Good Book Club is currently reading Acts chapter 10, in which Simon Peter, lodging at the seaside home of Simon Tanner in Joppa (Jaffa) is summoned by Centurion Cornelius, a God-fearer, and by the Holy Spirit, to Cornelius' home in Caesarea, to testify about Jesus. This is early evidence that God is opening the newly developing Church - - which began as a Jesus-cult or messianic sect of a band of Jews who had been with Jesus - - to us gentiles.  Because it makes it awkward to follow, jump skip jump, I do not appreciate that TGBC breaks the unit story up into several day's readings, but here it is for this morning. Also, scroll down, are the readings for this week.   Acts 10:17-33  Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. ...

One of my favorite  pastimes, and more so these days with seemingly unlimited time for it if only I could stop watching old war movies and pouring over old car brochures, is studying scripture, especially prepping for group discussion such as Sunday School and the midweek Bible seminars I mentored for a dozen or so years after retiring from full-time parish ministry. And in reading the Bible one of the things I seem to notice is that the various authors wrote down almost nothing that is mere detail or to fill space: if I read slowly and look closely, just about everything is significant and/or informative in one way or other even if at first glance it might not seem so. Just a couple of examples from this morning's TGBC reading below.  One is Luke's description of Cornelius as a devout man who "feared God" with all his household. Seems to me this came up a few days ago when we met the Ethiopian eunuch, whom I conjectured was either a Jew or a "God-fearer,...