I’ve been struggling to write again this week. Sunday’s conversation did not go as I expected and I’ve been trying to wrap my arms around why and how I can “fix” it, if that’s even a thing. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good conversation; it was honest and rich and personal. But there was a lot of anxiety. …
Boys Will Be Boys
In a couple of weeks, I’m going to a high school reunion. Not my real high school reunion – I’ve never been invited to one of those – but a reunion of my closest friends from high school. As I think about those friends, all men, I’m reminded that none of us are rapists. It is certainly possible that I’m …
How To Have Good Relationships – All of Them!
I’ve been married for twenty-five years and I’ve never figured out how. I don’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing, though that may also may be true. I mean I have never really tried to figure out how one is to be married – and certainly not married well. I suppose this is how we all do it. …
The Poor You Always Have With You
The poor you always have with you. We are almost 50 years past the first Poor People’s campaign. Still, as the Kairos center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice puts it: We are experiencing unprecedented poverty in the midst of plenty; unnecessary abandonment in spite of unheard abundance. The poor you always have with you. At least 46.5 million people, …
America, We Must Be Born Again
For the homily today, we’ll follow important conversations from three major players: Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, and James Baldwin. Nicodemus: The Vulnerability of Rebirth First, Nicodemus. When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, Nicodemus asks how a grown man can go back into his mother’s womb. More than an Oedipus complex, Nicodemus’s apparent misunderstanding is a rhetorical ploy …
Creation Care for Christians: Wrapping Up
by Lizbet Palmer This past Sunday, we finished out our series on Creation Care by talking about the events of this past weekend, and the dangers of “othering” both people and the environment. We lamented, and then we talked about why we have hope. I have hope, because I see so many people who are angry at injustice and are …
This Is Not a Metaphor – Sermon from Sunday, November 13, 2016
Readings: Isaiah 65.17-25; Luke 21.5-19 Before I begin, I want to clarify some labels that I will employ throughout. When I say “we” or “us,” I am primarily referring to those who regularly attend this church. However, because I know these people well, I know that most, perhaps all, voted for her, so it is not at all unfair to …
Finding Life in a Place of Death
This was the sermon from Easter Sunday: When the women go to the tomb on that Sunday morning, they are expecting to find a corpse. Because Jesus died after noon on a Friday, it was not possible to properly prepare his body for burial. The women who had followed him all the way from Galilee returned on Sunday morning to …
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Apocalypse!
Tomorrow is the last Sunday in the liturgical year, which means that it is our annual imagining of the Apocalypse. It is “Christ the King” Sunday, the day that Jesus returns to earth to sit in judgment of the world. It is the end. Then the strangest thing happens: Advent. We immediately begin to celebrate the birth of God into …
St. Fred Rogers
I haven’t really watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood since I was a kid. I don’t remember much about it except what has been parodied: the song, the sweater, the tennis shoes, vaguely the puppets. So I decided to refresh my memory and watch a little. It all comes rushing back, mostly this character: Mr. Rogers. Although, by all accounts, it is …