Neli ML

Twenty - second  Sunday after Pentecost 2023 By Tom Ward O Lord!  How long?  Have compassion on your servants!... Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.  (Psalm 90: 13 & 16) Today’s lessons have got me thinking about completeness and incompleteness, success and failure.  I’m not using the word “versus” in these pairings, success versus failure or completeness versus incompleteness.  I am intentionally using “and”.   That’s because, although these are two sets of antonyms or opposites, they are closely linked.  Often they can be hard to tell apart. Something only partly done can with time become satisfying and sufficient.  I think of Gaudi’s great church, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.  Building started 141 years ago.  Current plans optimistically call for completion in another decade or two or three.  But when I visited and climbed all over that amazing structure, it was more than enough.  Another example would be the Cathedral of St.

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost 2023 Matthew 22:15-22 Rev. Neli Miranda   For the last weeks, we have been following Jesus’ actions in Jerusalem where he has entered with great authority and has been received as a prophet by the people. However, his prophetic actions have aroused opposition and persecution from the political and religious elite in Jerusalem. While Jesus teaches and heals people in the temple, the religious leaders confront him, and in response, Jesus has addressed them with a series of parables that denounce their corruption and hypocrisy.             Today, we read that Jesus’ adversaries continue seeking the opportunity to bring him down. Matthew tells us the Pharisees and the Herodians have come together in a common cause to entrap Jesus, expecting him to provoke the Roman authorities or to lose his popularity among the people. This is the first of three attempts from various allies to entrap him. The plan is for Jesus to fail so they have a reason to

  Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost 2023 Mattew 22,1-14 Rev. Neli Miranda   Today, Jesus continues in Jerusalem confronting the Jewish authorities publicly denouncing their corrupt practices. However, instead of repenting, they resist God and reject Jesus. They have tried to arrest Jesus when he concluded addressing them about the parable of the wicked tenants, but “ they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. ” (21,46). Again, with God’s authority and the people’s recognition, Jesus continues with his denunciation and tells the people a third parable, known as “The parable of the wedding banquet”. Jesus begins this parable by saying , “ The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son…” (22, 2).   Here, Jesus changes his usual introduction to his parables from “ The kingdom of heaven is like…” to “ The kingdom of heaven may be compared to …”    In the text, the king sends his slaves twice to call the invited guests to t

  Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2023. October 8. Matthew 21, 33-46 Rev. Neli Miranda Last Sunday, we learned that Jesus entered Jerusalem with great authority in the company of a crowd of pilgrims, who hailed him as the Son of David, the One who comes in the name of the Lord. At his entrance, the surprised inhabitants of Jerusalem asked, “Who is this?” and the crowd responded, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” (21,10-11). This recognition of Jesus entering Jerusalem as a prophet means that this is a journey with no return, like many prophets of the past. He comes to denounce the corruption of the Jewish leaders, to call them to repentance, to warn them of the imminent judgment, and to suffer the fate of a prophet. His mission as a prophet guides us to understand his actions in Jerusalem, which first sought the liberation of the temple, the house of the Lord, which had been turned into a market and whose profits benefited mainly those who controlled the tem