Well, I am sure that many of you have have heard of these two places in Europe, Lourdes and Maggiore, that millions of people make pilgrimages to, in the hopes of receiving a miraculous physical healing.
Well, as we just heard from our gospel reading from the lectionary today for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment to love one another. Now we're reading from John's gospel. But Jesus also gave this new commandments in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s Gospels, where he said things like, love one another, as I have loved you.
Well, some of you know that before I became a pastor, I was a teacher. I was a highschool English teacher for 12 years. And to this day, I still love words. I love looking up the derivation of words. I like playing around with words. I especially love those mashup words, which is when you take two words and you put them together to form a new word. So most of you know the word brunch is a combination of breakfast and lunch. And smog is a combination of smoke and fog. Then there are more recent ones like blog is a combination of web and log. And dramedy is a combination of drama and comedy.
Well, from time to time some of you have asked me how I go about preparing my sermons each week. Many of you know that our scripture readings each Sunday come from the Revised Common Lectionary. It's the lectionary that most Christian churches around the world follow. And I absolutely love that on any given Sunday around the world, most Christian churches are putting their focus on the very same readings.
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