Tag Archives: magic
Healing
Naaman wants to be impressed and is bitterly disappointed. He wants shouting and magic words and hand waving and theatrics but all he gets is a simple command: wash in the Jordan seven times. All he has to do is trust the word of the prophet and he can’t do it. So it falls to his servants—the lowly people, so lowly they don’t even get names—it falls to his servants to persuade him.
Magic and Freedom
When we’re in an audience, we want to be led on, tricked, deceived by sleight of hand. In the real world, face to face, we don’t want that at all. We don’t want to be led on, tricked, manipulated. Instead we want to give ourselves freely to one another, and we want to receive the free gift of another person in return.
Ash Wednesday: Sleight of Hand
(Note: I preached this sermon at Messiah Lutheran Church on Ash Wednesday, 2014) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I have an incurable fascination with illusion. I grew up loving those eye-tricking drawings by M.C. Escher, the ones where the staircase is going […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 