The high liturgical seasons are behind us and now we enter “ordinary time.” No fancy name, like “Eastertide;” it is just called “the Season after Pentecost.” I like ordinary time, though. We get to spread out a bit, immerse ourselves in the stories of Jesus’ ministry, this year from the Gospel of Mark. Maybe pick up some of Paul’s writings, …
The Strangeness of Church
Last Sunday we celebrated Jesus’ ascension into heaven. It’s a typically Lukan scene of strangeness, a man being carried up into the sky until he disappears into the clouds. Things get weirder this week. It’s Pentecost. You’re probably familiar with the story. Jesus’ followers are hanging out, trying to figure out their next move when, suddenly, a wind starts blowing …
SuperJesus
We’ve been in a quasi-series throughout Eastertide, talking about the early Christian communities represented in Acts and 1 John. In particular, we’ve been looking at the struggle for identity through doctrine and practice. Unfortunately, that struggle has too often – not just in the early Church, but in every incarnation since – been decided in favor of doctrine, even at …
The Promise and Peril of the Spirit
Over the last few weeks, we have looked at the early Christian community in Jerusalem as depicted in Acts and the Johannine Christian community from which 1 John emerges. Both communities are trying to figure out what it means to be Christian, what it means to live into the promises of Jesus’ life and death. As both were trying to …
It’s the Queer Bits That Save Us
Michael Warner, in Fear of a Queer Planet, defines queer as “resistance to the regimes of the normal.” I can’t think of a better way to describe life in God. Yet we see in our examination of these two early churches, the Jerusalem church described in Acts and the Beloved Community of the Johannine literature, an attempt to focus on …