February 22, 2015 Matthew 4: 1-11 Psalm 25: 1-10 Rev. Catherine Purves During Andrew’s recent eye trouble he was unable to read or to drive. Being separated from his beloved books and his precious Audi was particularly painful. He was reduced to audio books and trolling through channels on the television. After the first day of this torture, he greeted me with a big smile when I came home from church and announced…
February 18, 2015 Ash Wednesday Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 Rev. Catherine Purves Are you any good at keeping a secret? Or do you have one of those faces that gives everything away? Even if you don’t say anything, do people know that something is going on, that you have a secret? Can you ever resist saying, “Guess what?” when there’s something new in your life? In this age of Facebook and tweets and…
February 15, 2015 Mark 9: 2-9 2 Corinthians 4: 3-6 Rev. Catherine Purves Do you remember being told as a child, “Never look directly at the sun.”? This, of course, made you want to do precisely that. “You’ll hurt your eyes.” “You may even blind yourself.” All sorts of warnings and threats were repeated in an effort to keep you from focusing your eyes on the sun’s glory. Even the reflected brilliance of…
February 8, 2015 Mark 1: 29-39 Rev. Catherine Purves How many of you, when someone asks how you are, automatically say, “Busy.” I know I do. And almost every time I say it, I think, I shouldn’t have said that. “Busy” doesn’t really describe who I am or how I’m doing. It’s not what I want people to think of whenever they are moved to call and ask for a bit of my…
February 1, 2015 Mark 1: 21-28 Rev. Catherine Purves It was still early days. The first four disciples, the fishermen, had just been called. Jesus was still virtually a stranger to them. He was a compelling enough figure that they were willing to leave their homes, their families, and their businesses to follow him. So they must have been hopeful and intrigued and relatively certain that this was no ordinary rabbi. The way…