III: About Standing (in Kinship) by Kimberly Blaeser

Kenilworth Union Church

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III: About Standing (in Kinship) by Kimberly Blaeser

Poetry Church—The Path to Kindness

August 18, 2024 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • John 13:12–15

And then across the chasm of centuries, there is Jesus. Stooping to wash his disciples feet. His great gift… his own labor of love under the “forgotten architecture of friendship…” wherein he discloses what it means to follow him. Like this. Stoop. Bend low. “find healing in the leaning, the closeness.”

One scholar puts it this way “It’s always easier to follow Jesus in our heads than it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa.”[1] The Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrow. The Via Dolorosa, sacrifice. The Via Dolorosa, the servant’s path. And Jesus replies to his disciples, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done to you.”

This is the “forgotten architecture of friendship.” This is how to follow Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. Like this. Stoop. Bend low. “find healing in the leaning, the closeness.”

[1] Herhold, Robert H. "Foot Washing and Last Things (John 13:1–20)." The Christian Century, March 9, 1983, 205.

WDJA (What Did Jesus Ask?), IX: If it were not so, would I have told you?

November 3, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • John 14:1–3

It’s not an accident that Halloween and All Saints’ Day are adjacent to each other on consecutive days. As you know, the word “Halloween” is a contraction of “All Hallow’s Eve,” the Eve of All Saints’ Day. Both holidays are trying to answer the same question: What happens to us when we die? or What are the dead doing? Ghosts and souls are adjacent concepts. What do you make of the way Halloween has exploded in prominence in the last ten years or so? All of my neighbors are trying to scare me to death. Americans will spend almost $12 billion on Halloween this year; that’s a tiny fraction of the $900 billion we’ll spend on Christmas, but still…

WJDA? (What Did Jesus Ask) VIII: Whose image is on this coin?

October 27, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Mark 12:13–17

You see why it’s so much fun to be a Christian: Jesus is just so good. With one slick move, he manages to elude the Pharisees’ trap like Lamar Jackson with one of his patented scrambles in the backfield. There’s the long heave! Bam! Touchdown Jesus! Not only does he manage to escape the Pharisees’ clutches, he also says enough about government and God in one sentence to fill a whole bookshelf full of esoteric volumes.

WJDA? (What Did Jesus Ask?), VII: Why are you afraid?

October 20, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Mark 4:35–41

The disciples complain “Jesus, we’re dying here! Don’t you care?” And Jesus responds with one of the 307 questions he asks in the four Gospels: “Why are you afraid?” It’s a question he’s been asking all of us ever since: “Why are you afraid?”