Thin Place – A Maundy Thursday meditation on Mark 12 and John 15 from a Wizard of Oz Lent

Mark 14:12-16, 22-25
John 15:12-15

Celtic spirituality, both pre-Christian and Christian, has given us the language of thin places to describe places where it feels like the realms of the human and divine mingle.  “Heaven and earth,” the Celtic saying goes, “are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. Journalist and author, Eric Weiner, writes of thin places, “[They] relax us, yes, but they also transform us – or, more accurately, unmask us.”

Ruins from Iona Abbey by Iain Marshall is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

People often talk about temples and cathedrals as thin places, or particular geographies – mountaintops or beaches – but in a New York Times travel article, Weiner argues that thin places can be more unconventional as well – a city park, a bookstore, or even a bar. Thin places give us a glimpse or a feeling of a reality different from what we typically experience – a reality more closely aligned with God’s spirit and intentions than we typically see.

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One More Thing – A confirmation sermon on Acts 2:43-47

Acts 2:43-47

So last week I said something about “this one thing” – that if our confirmation students remembered, if any of us remembered nothing else about anything the church speaks into our lives, we can remember this one thing – nothing, absolutely nothing, not what we do or what we don’t do, not what we believe or what we don’t believe, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  And I stand by that.11568242776_42e80297ae

For the most part.  Because it is really hard to just leave one thing there.  Even a really good thing.  Even the thing that I believe is the best news of all.  Even the thing that I believe declares the core tenet of our faith.  Even then it’s hard to leave just one thing and say, “If you remember nothing else….” because sometimes it’s hard to remember even just that one thing.  Sometimes it feels like it is impossible to find comfort in even that one thing.

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