I don’t want to alarm anyone, but Christmas is only six months away.  That should still allow for plenty of time to buy a nice gift for that special pastor in your life, but you can’t put it off.  It’s a process, after all.  Now that the rummage sale has come and gone, opportunities to pick something really nice might be few and far between.  (As a side note, we’ll have a final report from the rummage sale shortly.  There are still a few outstanding bills and such, but it looks like we did very well once again.)

“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God.” What is a kingdom? Is it the brick and mortar that build up the castle? Is it the expanse of land a king can reasonably defend? Our notions of kingdoms may be romanticized in the modern era, but for the Israelites, a kingdom held deep historical meaning. Thousands of years before the birth of Christ, the Israelites had asked God for a king. After the reigns of David and Solomon, the united kingdom dissolved into factions, and the land was conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and, finally, Romans. For the Israelites, a kingdom was something to build, both structurally and civilly. While this had ended in ruin for their ancestors, many of Jesus’ contemporaries longed for the restoration of an earthly kingdom.

I have nothing against the man, but I very much doubt that the late John Denver is going to show up on anyone’s list of the greatest theologians of all time.  He was one heck of a good songwriter, though, and he does make at least one bold theological claim that I am aware of:  that the State of West Virginia is, in fact, almost heaven.

As we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, let us reflect on the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas written in the 13th century, entitled “O Precious and Wonderful Banquet.”   “Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us forever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.