Category: Michael D
Behavior Patters
All the “God” talk and christian hymns included in the inauguration, the use of God, Jewish scripture, and Christian scripture by Franklin Graham, Congressional Reps, Senators, and the new President, as part of the inauguration was disturbing to me. The righteous certainty is dangerous. We see it in the negative response from the 47th President and his supporters to the Episcopal Bishop’s homily. Apparently, only the 47th President and his understanding of God is the divinely sanctioned mercy and unity that he, his Congressional allies, and Christian religious advisors will enforce on the rest of us. This Atlantic article, “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows,” provides some background on the fundamentalist Christianity that is being used by the 47th President and his enablers, be they believers or not.
President Trump’s address, the written one, contains his view and vision of these United States in this historical context and laid out what he thinks the Nation is called to be and do. Near the beginning of his address he used God to justify his Presidency and the Executive Actions he took later that day, legal or not as they may be. President Trump’s words. “I was saved by God to make America great again.” If he wants to think that or believe that, groovy. His behavior pattern makes this less than heartfelt religiosity or statement of faith. You can never know what is in one’s heart, but their behavior patterns provide insight. There is plenty of public evidence that the 47th President’s religiosity has little to do with the way of Jesus nor orthodox Christianity. David French writes about the change in our culture that Carl Schmitt, a German political thinker, calls the “friend-enemy distinction” in a New York Times opinion piece. It’s been bubbling in our Nation for a long time. Newt Gingrich practiced this perspective in Congress and blessed it. The GOP and Democrats have escalated ever since. Former President Obama’s election was a flashpoint of racial multicultural pluralism that celebrated the American dream, birthed the Tea Party movement, and inspired then Senate Minority Leader Senator McConnell to say, “My job is to make President Obama is a one term President.” It’s one example of why I think the GOP have become a party that only knows how to reign rather than govern. It’s just about wielding power and keeping power now and if you question, critique, you are nasty, unfair, and the enemy. Senator McConnell’s second act was holding open a SCOTUS seat to deny President Obama placing someone on the court. Secular multicultural pluralism is the enemy as is all those who support that idea and ideal of these United States.
Electoral college aside, the 47th President’s 2.2 million popular vote win is hardly a mandate when 76,558 million voted for someone else. What did the President do with the power granted him the first day? He reigned through Executive Order and continues to do so. He threatens. He is daring SCOTUS or GOP Congressional representatives to say, “No, you can’t do that.”
- He pardoned people that he enflamed to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many of those persons committed acts of violence against the police. I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me this transactional act is the President’s admittance of guilt in the criminal trespass and violence against police at the Capitol that day attempting to subvert the work of Congress. But, they did it for him and that’s ok.
- He challenged the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and birthright citizenship.
- He acted like Xi Jinping of China in renaming a body of water that belongs to the world as if it is American territory.
- He consolidated power into himself, his Office, and for those that serve him.
His behavior pattern demonstrates the President’s vision of government is a family of loyalists serving his desires solely, as if his vision of America cannot be questioned because it is divinely blessed. He and his enablers don’t want a pluralistic society of equal citizens in a functioning democratic republic of elected representatives and professional public servants whose oath is in defense of an idea and ideal of a Constitutional democratic republic. The 47th President has made himself and his supporters the idea and ideal of our Nation. Our Nation’s Constitution defines a President who is a co-equal branch of our government. Not a divinely appointed pharaoh or king. The 47th President and his enablers behavior patterns, in just the first week, portray the Borg rather than the United Federation of Planets. I’m sure many felt the same way about the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, and DEI. Older parliamentary style Nations have lived through this. I guess it is these United States’ turn.
Last year I decided to withhold the words below in the slog toward election day. It has been in the draft folder for a good long while. A few years back one of my writings was too provocative for a few readers whom I hold in high regard. Misunderstandings happen. Words shared. Attempts at reconciling. I continue to hold these people in high regard. I don’t understand the balance of their political preferences and religious commitments. I’m working to be curious and not judgmental. I trust I’m afforded the same. We can’t become a more perfect union if we don’t. I still think people are more than their labels and chosen identities. I’m more concerned with what people do than what they profess to believe. I think this tells a clearer story of the trajectory of their choices, lives, and beliefs. Most of us do our best to be our best each day. I don’t get it right every day. As my father suggests from his Masonic teachings, “What are you doing to add more light to your life and the lives of others?” It’s the definition of “light” that is in question now.
Some time ago, I read a lengthy article by David Brooks who is a weekly columnists for the New York Times, and also a writer for The Atlantic from time to time. His article, “How America Got Mean,” explores two questions: “Why have Americans become so sad? Why have Americans become so mean?” His exploration of these questions focuses on the lack of communal morality taught through trusted institutions. Those institutions include the soft power of Mainline or Orthodox Christianity and many other religions, clubs, lodges, associations, and relationships that stood as a communal check and balance of the human condition. The editorial summary statement reads, “In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.”
Like Facebook and Google, the algorithms on Apple News do their best to feed me what it thinks I want to read based on my “click” pattern. A modest suggestion. Get out of our bubbles and silos. Let’s at least confuse the algorithms and make them work harder. Publications like Christianity Today or Relevant are not part of Apple News, but the Washington Examiner and the Wall Street Journal are. I read diverse perspectives remembering that the Truth is out there and somewhere in-between the words and behaviors of our siloed lives. I remember that “news” and media outlets are profit centers. Outrage easily outsells everything else. I am a seeker of Truth, and I remember Obi-Wan telling Luke,
“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view. Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. 20th Century-Fox, 1983. The scene. With his last breaths Yoda confirmed that Vader is, in fact, Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. After the death of Yoda, Luke is sitting with R2D2 looking bewildered. Obi-Wan appears to Luke in what fandom calls “Force spirit.” Luke asks Obi-Wan Kenobi why he didn’t tell Luke the truth that Darth Vader was his father. Obi-Wan told a young Luke that the good man that was his father had been destroyed by Vader.
This article, again from The Atlantic, caught my attention. “Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Good Life,” by Authur C. Brooks. In a world focused on “happiness,” Brooks borrows from Aristotle’s ancient thought, which he briefly outlines, to create his parting thought to be “found by happiness.”
1. Name your fears and face them.
Authur C. Brooks, “Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Good Life.” The Atlantic: Ideas. August 10, 2023.
2. Know your appetites and control them.
3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift.
4. Give as generously as you can.
5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial.
6. True strength is a controlled temper.
7. Never lie, especially to yourself.
8. Stop struggling for your fair share.
9. Forgive others, and forbear their weaknesses.
10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private.
This reminds me of a brief conversation between Balian and Hospitaller about holiness in the movie, “The Kingdom of Heaven.”
I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What God desires is here (pointing to the head) and here (pointing to the heart) and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man – or not.
Ridley Scott, “The Kingdom of Heaven.” 20th Century Fox, 2005.
Behavior patterns. These days I’m surprised there is broad agreement about gravity, what it is, and how it affects humans and the planet. Feelings and beliefs matter more than facts or fact patterns or behavior patterns. Siloed news and entertainment media present their own “facts.” It makes me wonder if the generations since Nirvana took their lyric to seriously, “Here we are now, entertain us.”1 I haven’t seen the peer reviewed neuroscience that indicates a short attention span leads to smarter, higher functioning, thinking, moral human beings. WWE political characters keep many enraged, gives you someone to cheer, boo, blame and keep you at the distraction slot machine.
It seems to me that the ideal, “out of many, one” has been shelved by the extremes of the political, social, and religious left and the religious, political, and social right. By that I mean diversity and the common good only applies to a specific team; and sometimes not even that. The evangelical and the progressive morality activists are fighting for power and control. The evangelical christian morality activists and politicians have taken over, or are in the process of taking over State governments, much of the court system, public education, and are eyeing Federal government. Too many political candidates profess their christianity as a reason to vote for them. Some of it is fear based. Fear of loosing power, control, and status in society. Some is based in poor exegetical work thinking that humans can manipulate the Holy One into acting outside the Divine’s timeline, if a timeline exists. The behavior patterns of this form of christianity makes it hard for me to recognize Jesus of Nazareth. Is it any wonder the “nones” are growing rapidly not due to secularism, but fundamentalist religion. This christianity is colonial dominionism, capitalists, gender restrictive, and yearns for the days when everyone knew their place. Archie and Edith Bunker sang it, “Those Were the Days.” Our capitalist class system is a liberal caste system in a country that pridefully says, “pull yourself up by your boot straps.” Economic and religious colonialism did and does inflict enormous harm on an indigenous population. No matter how we deconstruct it or make excuses for it through theology (Doctrine of Discovery), divine right, or evolution (Survival of the Fittest), the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes echos a truth, “Good news to some will almost inevitably be bad news to others.”2
Some on the progressive political, social, and religious left behave similarly as those they disdain on the conservative religious, political, and social right. Round and round. Whatever gets a reaction from the other side is important. Eyeballs. Clicks. Cash. Extremism, no matter its form, is the threat. Self-control and humility is in short supply. Victimhood is the identity of choice these days even when problems or a situation is of one’s own making. Is there systemic inequality, racism, and discrimination in the world and in these United States? Absolutely. The Constitutional account still has insufficient funds for the marginalized seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in America. Unregulated capitalism is destructive. The economic 1% remain in power by keeping people fighting over cultural issues, religion, and morsels of the economic pie. That’s how the powerful usually keep power without using violence, but violence happens. There will never be a perfect democracy or republic or democratic republic or parliamentary government, but the citizens of our Nation were handed an idea, a more perfect union of the self governed. We see the possibilities of a more perfect union in times of natural disaster or shared National tragedy. Yet, in ordinary time it is a struggle.
Each person is responsible for the actions they take based on the decisions the make. There are choices and power and agency and struggle all along the economic spectrum no matter one’s ethnicity or chosen identity. The game and rules are different along the economic spectrum. The 1%, and billionaire class are rarely treated with the severity of the rest of us when they operate outside the boundaries or break the rules. See the SCOTUS decision granting broad immunity to the sitting President and the office of the Presidency. I think that sometimes rules must be broken and boundaries crossed, expanded, pushed out, because that is part of the maturing process for systems and for individuals. That is part of learning what needs to be conserved, jettisoned, and expanded. Can people change? Can systems change? History suggests the answer is yes. Sometimes it is thoughtful. Sometimes it is reactive. For better and for worse.
“Human beings are never going to be perfect, Roy. The best we can do is keep asking for help and accepting it when you can. And if you keep on doing that, you’ll always be moving towards better.”
In the finale of Ted Lasso (season 3), a group of male characters that call themselves the “Diamond Dogs” are discussing the question, “Can people change?” After several thoughts, Higgins, head of operations for the team, offers the idea above. Watch the clip here and watch to the end. If you are offended by language of the obscene variety, this may be a bit difficult for you, but I think the larger idea is worth wading through it.
Observe the behavior patterns of people wanting power from the progressive political, social, and religious left and the conservative religious, political, and social right. Then, ask some questions.
How do each define the common good?
Who is included and excluded in the common good?
What is each asking me to give up for their idea of the common good?
Am I willing to set aside my ethics for their idea of the common good?
Am I willing to set aside some of my religious convictions or question my convictions for this idea of the common good?
During July and August 2023, I filled the pulpit for clergy that were taking time away. Some were on much needed sabbatical. Some were taking vacation. I altered a sermon for each congregational setting exploring Galatians 5:16-26. Yes, even in a digital sanctuary context, some guest ministers use the same sermon in different settings. This Galatians passage is known in Christian shorthand as the “fruit of the spirit” text. Christian tradition’s favorite character, the Apostle Paul, is an often over emphasized example for wrestling with faith. He reminds the Christ community in Galatia about the behavior traits of followers of Jesus. This text was the focus of our church camp season in 2023. From my sermon.
We can read Paul’s words in a variety of ways.
“Fruit-full Faith”, Galatians 5:16-26, Rev. Michael Davison, July 2023.
- It’s a compare and contrast behavior list. It is a Sunday school lesson or book study for people who’ve been practicing Christian faith for a while that want to think broadly, systemically, about our context and culture.
- It’s a “don’t do this,” but “do this,” list. These are rules or boundaries that manage a community of your life.
- It’s a “don’t be this”, but “be this” list. This is how people who practice Christian faith present themselves in the world.
- It’s a kind of Enneagram or Myers/Briggs assessment. Knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses can help you understand how you react to life.
- It’s a mirror. You say you follow Jesus and are spirit filled. Well, how does that look on you today, or in this situation?
The closing words from my sermon offers a modest suggestion.
Our historical context is fighting over identities. It’s a fight about who has the power to define the decisions and who get’s to decide. Let’s be known as fruit bearing Christians.
Love
“Fruit-full Faith”, Galatians 5:16-26, Rev. Michael Davison, July 2023.
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Generosity (goodness)
Faithfulness
Gentleness and Self Control
Behavior patterns.
Notes
1. Kurt Cobain Krist Novoselic Dave Grohl, Nevermind, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” DGC, 1991.
2. Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News? Harper One, 2008.
Words and Meditations
I was gifted the trust of the pulpit today at Southern Hills Christian Church. Here are the words I shared in a lightly edited form. The text for the day was Luke 4:14-21
Good morning church. I start my day with thirty minutes of silence. It’s a practice I began in college when I studied Buddhism for a year. This week, I’ve been thinking about the words and meditations our Nation offered and received on inauguration day and the days since. I’ve thought about the words and meditations of my neighbors, family, and friends who have different religious experiences, economic circumstances, and political perspectives than my own. One morning, I remembered a story by the late Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes. Gomes was the Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and a minister at Harvard’s Memorial Chapel for many years.
Gomes was a guest preacher on the first Sunday after George Bush won the 2004 Presidential election. Many people sitting in the pews that day felt distraught, but many felt righteous. The lectionary gospel reading that day was Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. The message of the Beatitudes is meant for people who are not used to winning and who always consider tomorrow to be a better day. The Beatitudes describe a world turned upside down when the downtrodden are lifted up and those on top are cast down. In Gomes’ words, “It is the ultimate redistribution of wealth, and one can see why a certain kind of socialists would find it appealing and why a certain kind of capitalists would find it appalling. The gospel message in Luke is simply that knowing this, we now have a chance to do something about it before it is too late.”
Those who felt righteous that day grumbled to the settled pastor that the quest preacher brought politics into the pulpit. Those distraught felt comforted. Gomes says, “Both were wrong. I preached simply what the gospel presented and, alas, situational listening did the rest . . . Good news to some will almost inevitably be bad news to others.”(1)
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Gomes said, “The Bible alone is the most dangerous thing I can think of. You need an ongoing context and a community of interpretation to keep the Bible current and to keep yourself honest. Forget the thought that the Bible is an absolute pronouncement.” Our meditations and our words matter in shaping what we bring to the biblical witness and how we interpret its story about the good news of God and the life of Jesus of Nazareth in our ongoing context.
On the top floor of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., where the permanent exhibit begins, there is a little area with videos and archive documents that tell the story of how the museum came into existence and its purpose. One of the videos said, and I’m paraphrasing, “This museum, like all museums, has a perspective. It has a story we are telling. Listen to it. Explore it. Argue with it.” I bring that perspective to my study of the bible. It is my sacred text. Both Testaments contain authoritative stories that stand on their own without being assimilated through the work of Supersessionism. For me the bible is a kind of museum. And like a museum, you don’t have all the artifacts, original documents, and first or second-generation complete experience, so one must imagine, look for context clues, and to broader history, recognizing that I may only see in a mirror dimly.
The lectionary is one of the bible’s curators. It gathers biblical stories from a Christian perspective and applies them to a story about Jesus of Nazareth and God in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, his disciples, and the gospel writers did the same to explain their experience of Jesus as the Messiah or Christ as they evangelized the world with their living example, their words, and meditations. Jesus was Jewish. The Hebrew bible was his sacred text. The early followers of the Way, what Christians were known as before being called “Christians,” were Jews and Gentiles who had their holy scriptures, cultural stories, legends, traditions, and interpreters.
I need to pause for a side note from my companion, the Hebrew bible scholar, and remind us that when you read “law” in the Hebrew scriptures, she suggests the better translation is “teaching.” All of the Torah is teaching. She also wants Christians to remember that for the Jewish community, prophets were religious and cultural critics who spoke what people needed to hear, even when or especially when it was not what they wanted to hear. The prophets of the Hebrew bible are not future tellers or predictors of Jesus, specifically. That’s one of those interpretive acts we read back into the ancient text as we use words and meditations. The modern term is “revisionist,” and it is rarely positive act.
An old story from the Talmud says that in the first century, a stranger asked two rabbis a question. “Teach me the whole Torah while standing on one leg.” Rabbi Shammai was angered and hit the gentile with his measuring rod. Rabbi Hillel responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Now, go and learn.(2)
As we join the story today about the life and times of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, it is important to remember that the letters of Paul had been floating around Jesus communities, think house churches, long before the gospels were written. Evolution of the Word is an excellent book by Marcus Borg. In it, he provides a chronological order of the New Testament that begins in the 50s CE(common era). 1st Thessalonians is the oldest original Pauline letter and is the first book in the New Testament of Borg’s chronology. The gospel of Mark appeared in the 70s CE, and Luke in the 110s. I think of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) and John as prequels. They give Jesus a backstory for those who had met him through Paul, the early Jesus communities, and all who professed faith in Christ ever since.
Just before the reading for today, Jesus had two life-altering moments. Full of the Holy Spirit, he returned to Nazareth after being baptized and spent forty days in the desert, listening for God and facing his temptations. Jesus faces them, is strengthened, and knows those will always be his temptations. The text says he was about thirty years old when he began his work. I invite you to listen for the good news of God.
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
Luke 4:14-21, NRSV
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Christian tradition considers this Jesus’ first sermon. We don’t know if he was nervous speaking in front of the hometown crowd, but he had a good reputation before he stood to speak. As a Timothy of my congregation, it was tradition to preach at my home church at least twice before being ordained into Christian ministry. My mother told me that the first time she heard me preach, she was proud, nauseous, and puzzled. Not much has changed over the years.
We don’t know if Isaiah was the preassigned reading for the day or if Jesus asked for it, but he skips around and blends Isaiah 58:6 and Isaiah 61:1-2, but not all of verse 2. Go back and read Isaiah 61. The prophet is talking to people who have returned from exile. Remember situational listening. This sermon scene is Luke’s way of foreshadowing his story about the ministry of Jesus. From this point forward, Jesus puts his words and meditations about the year of the Lord’s favor into practice for the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. Jesus tells the people in the synagogue and all of us here that, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. It leaves everyone speechless. People may have been looking at one another. Is he saying what I think he is saying? I would have asked. So I did. I asked “Text with Jesus” AI chatbot, “What did you mean when you quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 in the gospel of Luke?” AI Jesus responded.
I quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 to proclaim the purpose of my ministry. It’s about fulfilling God’s mission of hope and restoration. By referencing these words, I revealed my presence and work were a continuation of God’s promise to God’s people. It served as an announcement that through me, God was actively working to bring salvation and transformation into people’s lives. It’s all about love, grace, and liberation.
Over the centuries, Jesus’ call back to Isaiah has been spiritualized, theorized, and paralyzed as Christian theologians have systematically explained God’s salvation story through Jesus alone. Faith in Jesus Christ has replaced the faith of Jesus in the promises of God. While belief and faith in Jesus the Christ can change a person, can comfort and help one understand what may come beyond this life, then and there, Jesus offers an alternative vision of the present. It is an invitation, a calling, to live differently, here and now. I remember a time when WWJD (what would Jesus do) was everywhere. Translation: followers of Jesus do Jesus-like things. If God was working through Jesus, then surely God is working through those who claim the faith of Jesus and faith in Jesus today. We need to take great care and great tact with our words and meditations because life is a great balancing act.(3)
Dr. Karoline Lewis, Professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary, describes Jesus’ reading of Isaiah with this question. “If you could choose the words that might encapsulate who you are, the only words that would communicate the essence of yourself, your life, your commitments, what would they be?”(4)
Theophane the Monk tells this story.
I had just one desire—to give myself completely to God. So, I headed to the monastery. An old monk asked me, “What is it you want?” I said, “I want to give myself completely to God.”
I expected him to be gentle, fatherly, but he shouted at me, “NOW!” I was stunned. He shouted again, “NOW!” Then he reached for a club and came after me. I turned and ran. He kept coming after me, brandishing his club and shouting, “Now, now.”
That was years ago. He still follows me wherever I go. Always that stick, always that “NOW!”(5)
The historian Diana Butler Bass offers this thought about the text. “Living in God’s promise is not about yesterday. Nor is it about awaiting some distant Messiah and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It is about NOW. This is a hard truth to hear and receive. Jesus’ friends refused. They would rather stay mired in nostalgia and complain about the future. How great the prophets were! If only a savior would appear and get us out of this mess! But Jesus’ sermon remains as clear and poignant and important and urgent as ever: Today this promise has been fulfilled in your hearing–what we need is here. Today.”(6)
Siblings in faith, remember that God’s grace and peace are not simply abstract concepts. You’ve experienced God’s grace and peace. God’s compassion and the way of Jesus are present in this world through your faith and your actions. Your individual and collective efforts as a congregation have the power to transform the world around you, even if it is just for a moment. I still want to believe that a moment might be, can be enough.
Even when you are not sure who is my neighbor, it’s the way you tend to your neighbors.
It’s the way you deal with ones that call you an (the) enemy.
It’s the way you tend to one another.
Sometimes, you can sense it.
Sometimes, you can see it.
Usually, you don’t know how kindness, a supportive word, a question or an action, small or large, can alter the trajectory of a person’s day, week, or life. And it may take a while to know how that moment affected you.
Jesus of Nazareth met people where they were in life’s journey:
the poor and the rich,
the powerful and the powerless,
the healthy and infected,
the in-group and the outcast.
His living demonstrated his words and meditations.
His living reminded people of another commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
That’s a mysterious gospel fulfilled in our hearing, meditations, words, and living.
There is ministry to do and gospel to be from this corner of Edmond, that only you can do and only you can be. Go be it.
_________
1. Gomes, Peter J, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News? Harper One (New York) 2007, p 30-31.
2. Rabbi Edward Feinstein, “On One Foot?” January 27, 2016. https://www.aju.edu/ziegler-school-rabbinic-studies/our-torah/back-issues/one-foot
3. A borrowed idea from Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, Random House, 1990.
4. Karoline Lewis, “Commentary on Luke 4:14-21.” January 27, 2013. workingpreacher.org. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-414-21
5. Theophane the Monk, Tales of a Magic Monastery. Crossroad (New York) 1994, p 50.
6. Diana Butler Bass, “The Power of Today.” Day1.org, January 24, 2016. https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2003dc8/the_power_of_today accessed January 25, 2025.