The Commons

A woman looked out her living room one morning and was amazed to discover a dead mule on her lawn. She called the sanitation department and asked them to remove the carcass. But by the time the work-crew arrived, she had changed her mind. She gave the men $100 each,…

My favorite way of taking the offering as a pastor was the following: “The Bible says ‘God loveth a cheerful giver.’ But God accepteth from a grouch. So in whatever spirit you give, the offering will now be received.”   But the introduction to an offering I remember the most was…

Back in the days when circuses traveled to cities, a circus strong man offered a reward to anyone in the town who could extract more from a lemon that he had squeezed dry. A small, frail-looking man accepted the challenge and, after great exertion, got one more drop of juice…

Preacher to keyboardist/organist: “When I am finished with my sermon this morning, I’ll ask those who want to contribute to our capital campaign to stand. In the meantime you play appropriate music.” Organist/keyboardist: “What appropriate music?” Preacher: “How about ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”  

Two small-town brothers were walking home from Sunday-school and discussing the lesson where the teacher had talked about Jesus’ healing of “divers diseases” in Luke (4:40): “ all that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and…

A child had been cautioned never to touch a vase on the mantel, a rare and priceless heirloom. One day he found himself tall enough to reach it, so he pulled it down and got his hand caught inside. The aghast parents applied soap suds and cooking oil with no…

Frank Kafka (1883-1924) is one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. In his parable called “An Imperial Message,” he asks the reader to imagine that the emperor of your country is dying. He has an earth-shaking message to leave before he dies, and he decides on…

During Lenten matins (morning prayer) in Eastern Orthodox churches, one prayer reads: “Let us venerate the Cross of the Lord, offering our tender affection as the cypress, the sweet fragrance of our faith as the cedar, and our sincere love as the pine; and let us glorify our Deliverer who…

What if wearing a cross were the sign of bearing the cross? Wearing crosses is a decoration. Bearing crosses is the discipline of discipleship  

Graham Greene’s novel Monsignor Quixote (1982) has a moment when the Spanish priest has a “terrible dream” that stays with him “like a cheap tune in the head.”                He had dreamt that Christ had been saved from the Cross by the legion of angels to which on an earlier…