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Psalm 50: 4-11; Matthew 21: 1-17, 23: 37-39Back in the early sixties -- those seemingly halcyon days before Presidents were assassinated in our lifetimes even as society was radically changing around us --Frank Sinatra made this wonderful recording of the song "Love and Marriage." Of course,
he wasn’t living that image. It’s just that most people back then really saw that as an ideal. "Goes together like a horse and carriage," continued the lyrics. "You can’t have one, you can’t have one, you can’t have one without the other." Well, to put it bluntly, the next fifty years proved Sammy Cahn, the writer of those lyrics, wrong.
Since 1955 when Cahn wrote the song and Sinatra sang it for a television version of Thornton Wilder’s
Our Town, our society has witnessed enormous cha...
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Amos 5: 14-24; Matthew 2: 13-23Back in the old days, whatever those were, children were supposed to be seen and not heard, but I remember a conversation at my Aunt Ruby’s dinner table when I was about fourteen or so when I put my two cents in and was so advised: Nobody wanted my opinion, least of all my southern relatives. The conversation was about the young people who were leaving the white-owned family farms in the 1950s, a fact that my Aunt Ruby was bemoaning. Uncle Evans, her absolutely terrible husband -- I never understood why she
ever married that man -- was telling her that the “nigras” -- the way he referred to African Americans when he was being polite -- just weren’t grateful for all the good stuff that they had: shacks without paved roads, running water or bathroom facilities, ...
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Psalm 46; Luke 19: 1-10This is how the story goes: One day, specifically July 2, 1505, Martin Luther was on his way to Stotterheim, a small town near Erfurt, Germany, when a violent summer thunderstorm began, and a bolt of lightening struck nearby. The pressure from the bolt was so intense that the horse he was riding threw him onto the ground; convinced this was a sign of God’s judgment on him, he swore he would become a monk. Perhaps I’m being a cynic, but I can’t help but notice how it bears a remarkable resemblance to the historical images of Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
The real story of Luther’s struggle is more like the struggles we face in our own lives: No thunderbolts from heaven, no sudden appearance of angels, but a daily search for something that approximates ...
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