Following Jesus' resurrection, two of his disciples encountered Jesus as they walked home from Jerusalem.  They were processing all they had experienced, along with their hopes and dreams.  Jesus asked them this question not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wanted to see if they knew the answer to his question.  What he found was that even some of his closest followers had unmet expectations and misundersta

There is no one else like Jesus who has ever risen from the dead. Jesus is unique among all people, through all times. And Jesus comes to us today asking questions, not because he doesn’t know the answers, but to see if we know the answers ourselves. While each of us come to the Easter Story with our own bias and perspectives, today Jesus challenges us to be more like John, who knew just how deeply Jesus loved him and believed that J

Palm Sunday is the day the Church remembers Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem before going to the cross.  While the Jewish people had one set of expectations for Jesus as Messiah and King, Jesus had a completely different agenda.  It was hoped that he would set them free from Roman oppression, but Jesus came to set them free from sin.  The truth is that sometimes we need to untie our expectations from what God has actually planned. &n

Jesus told his disciples that the world would know that they were his followers by the way they loved one another. This means sometimes going above and beyond to serve others when we’d rather not. Jesus’ question today challenges us at the core when self-centeredness seems to rule the day.

In today’s gospel story, Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. Since he had been buried in the tomb for four days, there was no question in everyone’s mind that he was really dead. “Irrevocably dead” as one commentator put it. When Jesus asked the dead man’s sister if she believed that Jesus could raise him from the dead, she responded, “We know you can do it, not we believ

Jesus’ way is the narrow way, the hard way.  And sometimes his teaching is just plain difficult to understand.  That was especially true with the context behind his question today.  Sometimes all we can do is trust Jesus' words to be true and know that the power of the Holy Spirit will enable us to remain on the journey with him.  In those cases, may we, like Peter, ask, "Who else has the words of eternal life? &nb

  Anxiety and worry run ramped in our world today. And certainly, our social media addictions haven’t helped much. We obsess about other people’s lives and what they think about us. What if people don’t like me? What if I don’t match up? What if I can’t pay my student loans? What if the world warms to the point of no return and self-destructs? What if?????  Can we see the spiral downward tha

Sometimes we face impossible situations that require faith. The Book of Hebrews tells us that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  All God asks is that we do our part of providing a little bit of faith and then trusting that God will do God’s miraculous part.  

In our scripture today, Jesus encountered a man who had been invalid for 38 years, sitting by the edge of a healing pool.  Though Jesus knew his story, he still asked him a very pointed question, “Do you want to get well?”  Our immediate response might be, “Duh, that’s why he’s been sitting there for 38 years!”  But underneath the issue, Jesus’ probing question actually uncovers a whole other set of bar

Many Christians today operate from either a theology of scarcity or a theology of abundance. What I mean by that is that they either believe that they don’t have enough or that God provides more than they need. Jesus asked his disciples this question as they faced the impossible task of feeding four thousand men, not including the women and children. What started as scarcity turned into abundance as they saw how Jesus took what they could provide and multiplie