MBS Newsletter
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
I could not detach my readings of the gospel this week from a consideration of my many blessings.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
This week news came that the United Methodist Church had formally disavowed the LGBT community as not authentically Christian. “Incompatible with Christian teaching,” it said.
This is dismaying news from the largest Christian community in the United States. It seems to affirm recent trends toward treating our LGBT brethren as lesser; worse, it seems to treat them, when they elect to live authentic lives and love as they were formed to do, as unholy.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Like many young Americans, I grew up inundated with the bootstraps mythology—that old proud work ethic which insists that there’s nothing that a person cannot achieve by the sweat of their own brow.
I do not mean to dismiss its ethos entirely—I think there’s something quite valuable in asserting to young children that they can do anything, be anyone, scale any height if they but dream it, if they but dare to work toward it.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48
Bedtime is not always a peaceful prospect for me. When I’m alone in the dark, solace often eludes me; it’s then that the concerns I submerge during the day, from the minute to the significant, become most pressing. They practically take form when my head hits the pillow, and I’m sometimes kept awake for hours worrying, feeling increasingly less safe.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
How great was the power of the early church. How great, and how vast its potential.
We read this week both of the vocational induction of the followers of Christ and of the radically inclusive ways in which they so shaped their early communities. These are chapters which not only indicate that those who knew Jesus were called, but that they knew how to answer in humbling ways which we could probably stand to mimic.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 114; 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8; Luke 24:13-49
They loved him wholly, followed him reverently, knew him to be a prophet unlike any other…and then were witness to his death on a cross.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Mark 11:1-11; John 12:12-16
Atop the cloaks of his disciples, on a colt borrowed from a stranger, treading upon a makeshift carpet of palms: in Mark, Jesus very nearly seems to ride into Jerusalem reliant on the charity of others.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33
I am sure I am not alone in this: an old Easter time fantasy of mine is that I’d be able to travel back in time and stay the hands of Christ’s accusers and executors.
This hapless dream owes itself to the guilt I feel when I consider his form on the cross. The thought tends to flit across my mind: he did so much for us. If I could just return a measure of it. If we could render it unnecessary.
If only.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-21; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
This primary season has been an interesting one, and one that Christians may have watched with particular concentration. After all, the candidates have been adamant in putting themselves forward as men of faith, and have been quick to assert concerns whenever they felt religion was being affronted by the president they hope to run against.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
We know that Jesus was forgiveness personified—that his life, and death, were required because of the inescapable fallibility of humanity, and that Jesus, knowing this, decided that there was no sinner for whom he could not find compassion and good-will.
As such, we like to think of him as endlessly patient, unflappably calm, his tone always measured even in the face of obscenities. And this is partially true.
