March 25, 2026

March 25, 2026

by | Mar 26, 2026 | PS from PS

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John 8:2-11; Matthew 23:23The Inconvenience of Mercy – reflections from Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail


The inconvenience of mercy is that it’s hardly ever merited.But good grief, does Jesus talk ad nauseam about mercy in the Bible; perhaps most famously telling his disciples—to their great chagrin— they must forgive their siblings seventy-seven times for the same sin (Matthew 18:21-22). He calls the merciful blessed in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:7). And then there are his words as he is dying, on a cross, surrounded by criminals and his weeping mother and the mob that lynched him: “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). In John 8:2-11, he embodies mercy with a woman whom I am rather inclined to think has received little mercy in her life, but that’s my own protective instincts kicking in for women in patriarchal places. It’s entirely possible she “deserves” little of what Jesus is offering her.Mercy—unmerited, inadvisably offered, and brimming with foolish hope—is the making of a Christ-follower.It’s not that I think practicing mercy is particularly easy.I doubt Jesus would talk so much about forgiveness and mercy if it were easy—God tends to repeat what we struggle to listen to. No, mercy is brutal.Mercy is what we ask for when we have messed up so mightily in our relationships, our marriages, our parenting, our friendships, that we face either the death of that relationship or the death of who we thought we were. Perhaps this is the kind of death this woman had experienced in her home, and the anger of the crowd was merely reflective of how hurt they were to see a home torn apart. Maybe she had been dealt a death-dealing marriage and was looking for escape. How dare she, then, receive. . . mercy?And yet, mercy makes no sense. It is not logical, or equally beneficial.  Mercy does not make us money or make us look good. But mercy is what makes us God’s own.The receiving and extending of mercy in the most awful and improbable of places is what makes me know that God is still at work in this world.Mercy is a practice of hoping and knowing that there is more than the thing that hurts us—more than the thing that haunts us. This, too, is how mercy is part of God’s justice, for God’s justice is God’s joy. God’s justice does not align with our human metrics of justice and punishment. God’s justice is the delight God feels at the lost sheep coming home, the coin being found. God’s goodness is not retributive.  God’s goodness is rooted in goodness propagating in the face of death.Which is, perhaps, why Jesus tells her: Go. Sin no more. And live.ReflectRecount a time when you received mercy. How did it feel?Blessings,PS and PK 
March 18, 2026

March 18, 2026

by | Mar 18, 2026 | PS from PS


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Matthew 19:13-15; Deuteronomy 24:17-22 For the Children – reflections from Rev. Dr. Brian Blount
For children, we would do anything. Children are the closest thing to a miracle in most of our modern human lives. They are blessings we indulge with the best of our energy, support, protection, attention, and acceptance. We not only welcome them into our company—we make them the center of our attention. We watch what they do. Marvel at how they grow. Attend to what they say. It was not always so. In Jesus’ time, in the company of adults, particularly adults with a sacred agenda, children were an invasive distraction. Humble in both physical stature and emotional maturity, children occupied one of the lowest rungs of social status. Leaders like Jesus were not expected to climb down to their level, and parents ought not to presume lifting them up into his presence. That was the attitude of Jesus’ disciples. They mirrored the ethos of their time when Jesus so desperately wanted them to challenge it—by treating children the way they would treat him. Earlier, Matthew 18:1-5 records an incident where Jesus warns that only those who humble themselves like children will receive entry into the reign of God. He follows up that startling revelation with the even more striking declaration that in welcoming the lowly child, one welcomes Jesus himself. Just a brief time later in Matthew 19:13-15, the disciples attempt to bodyguard Jesus, pushing away every child in range of Jesus’ sacred space. In rejecting the children, they are rejecting Jesus. So Jesus rebukes, not the parents and their children, but his dull disciples. They refuse to entertain the radical truth about God’s reign that Jesus is trying so desperately to teach them. The reign of God belongs to children and everyone who, like children, is not granted polite society’s respect and acceptance. The children, then, are a metaphor for all who lack societal status, who so-called decent folk find distasteful and undesirable. The migrant worker. The immigrant. The alien. The homeless. The powerless. The undocumented. Harking back to Deuteronomy 24:17-22, where God commands the people to care for the socially downtrodden because they themselves had been beaten down in Egypt, Jesus issues a clear, if not controversial, command for his followers. They are to live as an ekklesia, a “church.” And this church is to exist in this world as a refuge of radical welcome. In this season of Lent, the good news is that God, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, extends the same radical welcome even to us.  Because we are all lowly sinners, we are all unworthy of acceptance in God’s reign. And yet, God promises to receive us as if heaven is our home. Jesus wants his church to offer the same hospitality—to greet those of the lowest stature with the grandest welcome. Reflect What’s one way your church or community can extend radical welcome? Blessings, PS and PK   Twitter Facebook Website     Copyright © 2026 St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, All rights reserved.
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March 11, 2026

March 11, 2026

by | Mar 11, 2026 | PS from PS

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Mark 6:32-44
God Doesn’t Start with the Problem – reflections from Rev. Lizzie McManus-DailThe early days of planting my church, Jubilee,12 and the early days of motherhood were one and the same for me. They were days when my dreams were coming true—but I wasn’t sleeping much.My call was clear: start a new faith community. In my living room.  With the expectation that we would grow to need a bigger space, soon. (Where would said bigger space be? Yeah, that was the million- dollars-we-didn’t-have question). Every little thing felt so impossible because it was so new. I cannot tell you how many late nights I spent fretting, not just about the liturgy, but how I could make a bulletin for the first time. . . ever. . . and how we’d get it printed, and how to know how many we would need, and where I could get affordable altar linens. We were growing too fast for me to keep up—a wonder!  A gift! And! It was all so depleting, this dream-come-true business.I wonder if that’s how the disciples felt. The dreams were coming true!  And, a God who makes all things new means. . . a lot of new. I picture their eyes popping when Jesus tells them to feed the crowd. I feel my stomach curdle on their behalf as they do the mental math for that much food.But God does not start with the problem: How do we feed all these people?God starts with what God has—which is everything, held in her hands.  And God also starts with what God has given us—five loaves, two fish. With God, all things are possible because God knows that God is always. . . God. It’s us who break faith, it’s us who listen to scarcity, it’s us who fear our own hunger. Our God is a God of abundance.  However loud the scarcity of the world grates, God delights in feeding the hungry, in accomplishing what we dare not imagine.I remember one of the first abundance interruptions that salved my scarcity-frantic brain in those early motherhood-and-church-planter days. My in-laws were moving to town (grace upon grace) and my mother-in-law was a lifelong church pianist. Thus far, as much as I wanted music—music, after all, was what nourished me most in prayer—we had just done some simple, a cappella, Taizé songs for worship. It would be so wonderful to have her play, I thought. If only I had a keyboard.I kid you not. The moment I said this half-prayer, half-hope, my neighbor posted on our local “Buy Nothing” group that he was getting rid of a keyboard and needed it gone ASAP.God doesn’t start with the problem. God starts with what we all have.  That Sunday, we sang “Amazing Grace” while the rafters shook. Turns out, nothing really is impossible with or for God.
Reflect
When has God interrupted your life with abundance?
Blessings,
PS and PK
March 11, 2026

March 4, 2026

by | Mar 4, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from ps/pkLuke 7:36-50; Matthew 25:35-40Fierce Love – reflections from Rev. Dr. Brian BlountHow fiercely does God love? Let me tell you a Galilean story.  Simon, a Pharisee, a religious man who lives his life according to God’s laws, invites Jesus into his home. Customarily, such a host would greet a guest with acts of hospitality: the washing of feet soiled by dusty roadways; an anointing of oil for respite from the heat of the day; a kiss of welcome. Though Simon receives Jesus, he provides no such greeting.Impertinent and audacious, having heard that the great teacher is in Simon’s house, a woman, an unsolicited sex worker, invades the space.  Immediately, the Pharisee, a man tasked with conveying God’s love to God’s people, distances himself from her. From his perspective, the love in which she traffics, commercially but not virtuously intimate, prohibits her presence. But Jesus graciously allows her to draw near.When she is close, ironically, she offers Jesus the hospitality that Simon had neglected. She washes. She anoints. She kisses.Scandalized, Simon rebukes Jesus for letting this woman touch him.  Disappointed in Simon, Jesus responds with a parable about the extravagance and ferocity of God’s love: two people are in debt to a man, just as every one of us is in the debt of sinfulness before God.One debtor owes the man little. The other debtor owes the man much.  Ridiculously, the man forgives both of them their debts. Which debtor, Jesus asks, will be the most grateful, will respond to the man with the most love? Of course, it is the man who owed the most.Simon believes that he owes God much less than this disreputable woman because he has lived a life of holiness and righteousness. Just so, Simon can never know the ferocity of the woman’s love for the God who loves her. According to Jesus, God loves her with an extravagance of grace that cancels all her sins just as surely as the creditor expunged his lender’s massive debt.Jesus tells the woman to go in peace. How can she, though, without help? Living on the streets, she finds welcome among those who struggle like her. Forgiven, she now needs the welcome she has shown Jesus to be extended to her by a community of Jesus people—people who recognize that they, too, have been graced by the extravagance ofGod’s fierce, unrelenting love.Did not Jesus say in Matthew 25 that to welcome him is to welcome those whom the self-righteous have rejected? The hungry. The immigrant. The homeless. The convict. Jesus’ church can show Jesus’ fierce love by inviting into the intimacy of their faith fellowship those whom others are scandalized by.By recalling Jesus’ journey to the cross, the season of Lent reminds us of God’s extravagant love. May this season inspire us to love others just as extravagantly, just as fiercely as God, through Jesus, loves us.ReflectDescribe an example of extravagant love for have experienced.Blessings,PS and PK
March 11, 2026

February 25, 2026

by | Mar 4, 2026 | PS from PS

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John 2:1-11“Ooh, Heaven Is a Place on Earth” People didn’t think Jesus could boogie like that. It took them by surprise—his dance moves, undoubtedly, but also how much Jesus, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God . . . loves a good ol’ fashioned Electric Slide.Jesus is there, at the wedding in Cana. And the party is at the tipping point: the moment when people are either gonna dip, or the party is about to go to the next level. The shoes will come off on the dance floor, mama is gonna bust those moves she hasn’t used since college— but instead, something terrible has happened.The host has run out of wine. The servants know it. And for some reason . . . Mary knows it, too.In John’s Gospel this is how we meet Mary. A woman who knows the panicked secret about to ruin the party: there is no more wine. A woman who knows exactly who can fix it, so she goes to find her son.  Maybe Jesus is dangling a solo cup in hand, leaning against a wall and enjoying from the sidelines. Maybe he was doing the Cha Cha Slide and is irked to be interrupted. An embarrassing squabble with one’s mother in front of friends is a seminal human experience, after all.Or maybe this whole conversation is a teasing ruse because mother and son both know what is about to happen—they’re both in on the delightful surprise.The good news is a surprise to us, of course, but it’s not a surprise to God.  However this conversation goes down—sassy or sincere—I picture Mary, unblinking at Jesus’ insistence that his hour has not yet come.She turns to the crowd of befuddled waitstaff as she saunters off with: “Do whatever he tells you!” Mary has complete trust in the miracle to come.The servants turn to look at Jesus—hopeful, skeptical, bewildered— and Jesus tells them to fill six stone water jars, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. “And they filled them up to the brim” (John 2:7). This is equivalent to one thousand bottles of wine! Which is exactly what it becomes. The party tips from good to unforgettable.Behold: Jesus’ debut act of ministry. It’s not a healing, or an exorcism, or turning tables for justice. Jesus’ first act is to help ensure a party becomes the best party possible. It’s a total surprise.Because this . . . this is who Jesus is. Jesus doesn’t have to begin with defeating evil because he knows ultimately evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who loves disco and his mother. Evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who is not only not afraid of scarcity, but laughs in the face of it. Evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who will never let an empty cistern or full tomb have the final word. Evil is predictable. But our God loves a surprise because God knows the plot twist is the same every time: God’s goodness will overflow. Every.  Single.  Time.ReflectHave you ever been surprised by overflowing goodness?Blessings,PS and PK
March 11, 2026

February 18, 2026

by | Feb 18, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from ps/pkLet Go of the Ordinary – reflections from Rev Brian Blount“Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the reign of God” (Luke 14:15). For the person who makes this proclamation, “anyone” is more expansive than he knows. He is thinking about people like himself— the well-positioned and well-to-do who invite peers to their parties.  Persons self-important enough that when they enter they seek the highest seat so that they can be appropriately recognized. This is ordinary social behavior. This is why the householder in Jesus’ parable starts out by inviting people like himself. He, too, does the ordinary.  And all is well. Until his people decline his fabulous invitation in order to tend to their mundane affairs.Humiliated, the householder repents of his ordinariness and leans into the extraordinary. He does not invite another lateral group of socialites, or those the next level down on the social ladder. Instead, he extends his welcome to those who have nothing. He declares his intent to share his feast and his company with those whom life has broken: “the poor, the maimed, the blind, and the lame.” The paupers who have been banished from proper community will inherit the bounty that the high and mighty reject.The reign of God is like that! It redefines the meaning of communal belonging. Ordinarily, the host of a banquet invites and serves the very people who have no need of the banquet’s bounty. The extraordinary people who hope to emulate God’s transcendent love invite into their company not just those who have, but those who need. They make the broken ones socially whole and physically welcome.The season of Lent reminds us that God has extended such an extraordinary welcome. To us. In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, God, holy beyond all human standing, invited us, in all of our brokenness, into the community of divine presence. Not because we earned a place, but because God created space. Lent offers us the opportunity to remove all the distractions and focus on the invitation. We are the broken. God is the householder. Jesus is the invitation. All we have to do is say “yes.”Reflect:How are you responding to God’s invitation this Lent?BlessingsPS and PK