Article: The Mood of Christmas

Last week my friend and colleague the Rev. Cindy McCalmont of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) wrote an “op ed” for the Mercury News that has not yet been published. She sent this to me and other clergy to ask if we would sign on to this “op ed” at the time of publishing….

It is November 1st as I write this and it is a church holiday. It is All Saints Day and tomorrow is All Soul’s Day. How did these commemoration days come about? Well, read on…. In the early years when the Roman Empire persecuted Christians, so many martyrs died for their faith, that the Church set…

We are just a few days from the beginning of Holy Week. We will remember:  Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (he is from Nazareth), how Jesus disrupted the business of the Temple (called the cleansing but he didn’t do any cleaning) how Jesus taught daily in the Temple courts (outside the Temple building)  Jesus celebrating Passover…

I was reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians recently and I was struck by the “big issue” Paul needed to address within the church. Literally, it is an issue that might seem irrelevant to us or a “thing of the past.” Yet, if we look at the same issue thematically, it is still an topic…

If Jesus had an obituary, what would it say? If they put it in the newspaper on Saturday, would they print a retraction on Sunday? Here is one possibility… But we know the rest of the story, don’t we? This was not the end. This was just the beginning… Pr. Ben

Are you as busy as I am? I think a lot of you are. If you are not working, then you are working around the house. When God commanded that we take a “Sabbath day of rest” it was meant for us. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God wants us to take…