The Little Scroll

April 26, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.  “ Very truly, I tell you.” These are the opening words of John 10 in the New Revised Standard Bible. But when I read this passage as a boy in the King James Bible, Jesus said, “Verily, verily I say unto thee.” I thought that was an odd way to talk. Jesus, of course, spoke in Aramaic and these words are cast in Elizabethan or Shakespearean English. But I was fascinated by the way they rolled off the tongue and eventually I put them in a little song. Verily, verily, I say unto thee I am the master of the gate You should approach on bended knee And don’t be fretful while you wait.   I am the shepherd, you are the sheep, And I’ll rejoice when the pen is full Full of the righteous, faithful meek ‘Cause I’m not in this for the wool. Martha tells of her experience years ago watching shepherds gather a straying flock of sheep in rural Wales. She said the sheep looked ugly, wooly, and dirty, quite unlike t...

April 19, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, B.Y. The Twilight Zone encounter on the Road to Emmaus is one of three appearances of the resurrected Jesus in Luke’s gospel.  Two travelers are walking together when a mysterious stranger appears. Only one of the walkers - Cleopas - is named. The other walker is the second mystery in the story. Some scholars think Luke either had a lousy copy editor or that the unnamed person was Cleopas’ wife and, by first century standards, not worth identifying. What we do know is that both travelers had known Jesus for years and know what he looked like. But when a stranger approached them they didn’t see the resemblance. That’s understandable. For one thing, Jesus probably looked a lot better than he did the last time they saw him, when he was scourged raw, his face twisted in the agony of crucifixion. The stranger may also have been wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Arab covering that would hide his face. Many artists and cartoon...

April 12, 2o26. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y. When was the last time you suspected a widely shared rumor was not true? Did you ever get an email from a Nigerian prince who claimed he had millions of dollars to share with you and all he needs is your social security number? Did you ever get a call from an insurance company that claims your car maintenance insurance has expired and you need to send them money immediately? Have you received texts that appear to be from a close relative who says he’s in jail and needs you to send bail money immediately? Most of us can recognize a con when we see one. In the Internet age we have to be very careful when outrageous claims or pictures are posted about the lives of rock stars or politicians.  Sometimes it’s easy to see through the deception of Artificial Intelligence; that's probably not Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy schmoozing happily while putting together on a Trump golf course. In such cases we embrace our ...

  Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y. For the past several hours, the disciples have hidden in a darkened room, confused, grief-stricken, frightened. The central figure in their lives, Jesus of Nazareth, has snatched from them. They have watched his agony on the cross. They have watched him die. They may even have thought that their own lives are over. What could the future hold for them in the dangerous byways of Roman Palestine? But now it’s Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene is the first to visit the tomb of Jesus. In one of the most moving stories in scripture, in John’s gospel, she encounters a man she assumes is the gardener. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “ Rabbouni !” (which means teacher.) How quickly her grief turned to joy. For me, this is one of the most poignant and dramatic scenes of the New ...

March 22, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.  In 1968 I completed my four years as an enlisted assistant to Air Force chaplains and headed off to college. Those four years in the Air Force went by so quickly and were such a tiny   segment of my life that it seems remarkable the impact of those years remains so strong sixty years on. I was 18 when I enlisted, which means I spent the entirety of those years before my frontal cortex was completely developed. Even so, the Air Force was an invaluable introduction to ecumenical and interfaith customs and traditions. I typed sermons for Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic chaplains. I typed, prepared, and duplicated worship bulletins. I prepared the chapel altar for Catholic Mass, Protestant worship, and Jewish shabbat. I also observed the gulf between evangelical and mainline Protestants. One active couple in the chapel was a master sergeant from a Lutheran background and his wife Muriel, a recovering...

March 15, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. There are three instances in the gospels in which Jesus cured blind people. In John 9, Jesus restored the sight of a man who had been blind since birth. There is the healing of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52. Earlier, in Mark 8:23-25, Jesus delivered a two-part remedial on a blind man who initially saw people walking around like trees but, after Jesus touched him a second time, “saw everything clearly.” There is no question that the restoration of sight is a monumental miracle. Just how monumental the miracle may be is hard to access by we who have always taken our sight for granted.  “I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage,” said Stevie Wonder. “I am what I am. I love me! And I don't mean that egotistically – I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it.”  Ray Charles said blindness clarified his p...