Tag Archives: inheritance

The Peace of God’s Realm

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Proper 13 C, 3 August 2025.  The Rev. Dr. John D. Golenski.

Luke 12:13.  “Teacher, tell my sibling to divide the family inheritance with me.”

Whenever I hear this portion of Luke’s Gospel, I am carried back to an eerie parallel in my extended family’s history. One of my maternal uncles, Zephyr (everyone called him “Fee”), one of my mother’s younger brothers, returned from the Second World War in one piece. He had served in the Allied Persian Corridor Logistics Corps, which had built and maintained the route for almost half the lend-lease materiel sent from the US to the Soviet Union. They had helped the Russians to repulse the German invasion of 1941-44. Fee’s parents proudly displayed a photo of the “Big Three” meeting at Yalta. In the background, Fee is standing at attention as one of the honor guards. Continue reading →

Covenantal Connectedness

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany, B, February 14, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

2 Kings 2:1-12. “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
2 Corinthians 4:3-6. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Mark 9:2-10. He did not know what to say for they were terrified.

O God of Revelation, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

We have come to the end of the season of Epiphany, the season of celebrating sacred gifts and divine disclosures. In our Hebrew Bible lesson this morning we have the wonderful story from 2 Kings about how Elisha got the power and the authority to carry on Elijah’s work after Elijah was gone, after he was “taken up.” Elisha had been travelling with and learning from Elijah for many years. He had burned his farming equipment and slaughtered his oxen, thus destroying his means of income, his livelihood;  he had left his home so that he could travel with the prophet Elijah (much more dramatic than leaving the boats and nets with Zebedee and his hired hands to follow Jesus).

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