One thing I love about Church in the Cliff is that the conversational format allows for dissent and dialogue. As soon as we began our series on saints, questions were raised: “Isn’t canonization really a political process?” “Is anyone really a saint?” “Aren’t we all saints?” Another thing I love about Church in the Cliff is that everyone came along …
A Hoping Machine, a Working Machine: St. Woody Guthrie
If Bayard Rustin is the architect of the progressive movement in America, perhaps Woody Guthrie is the soundtrack. He seems to be rediscovered as each generation finds itself, once again, in lean times. Then he is forgotten when people forget that hard times can happen to them, too. Woody always remembered because he lived it. Although he started life in …
Changing Change: Saint Bayard Rustin
Today, as I write this, it is National Coming Out Day. It is fitting, then, that this week we will canonize Bayard Rustin. He was, in many ways, the architect of the 20th century American protest movement. In 1942, thirteen years before Rosa Parks, he refused to move to the back of a Louisville-to-Nashville bus. He was arrested and beaten, …
St. Francis: To Walk in Jesus’ Footsteps
Let me start by admitting that I know little about our selection for this week’s saint: St. Francis of Assisi. I have an image of him, but I think I get him confused with Snow White. But as I read the Wikipedia article on him, I found some bits of information tucked away in the recesses of my shabby memory. …
The Decisive Moment
Since this is the last in our mini-series on the cross, I might as well lay my cards on the table. This view is offered not as a final answer, but as an opportunity for further questions. Ultimately, I think the cross is just that – an opportunity for more questions. The theologian Schubert Ogden describes Christ as the decisive …
The Scandal of the Cross
It seems that the people of the Jesus Movement expected something else. Maybe a violent overthrow of their Roman oppressors. Maybe just a living wage and single-payer health care. A chicken in every pot. Maybe they just wanted someone, one of their own, to say that he understood and to speak for them and fight for them. But it didn’t …
Faith in Doubt, Doubt in Faith
Qohelet, the primary voice of Ecclesiastes, has a penchant for hedging. There is no profit in wisdom or foolishness – the wise and the foolish will both die alike – but it’s probably still better to be wise. Ultimately, God is inscrutable, but we should probably honor God anyway. Is this capitulation to the common wisdom that Qohelet spends so …
Shepherding the Wind
One of my all-time favorite teaching moves was when my theology teacher used the movie Contact to help us seminary novices get a handle on the idea that our talk about God has a story to it (in particular, Contact was a springboard for us to talk about the doctrine of revelation – that point of numinous connection human beings …
Ship of Fools: Stewardship
One of the reasons we are doing this series – and perhaps the reason Church in the Cliff exists – is that there is a tremendous amount of skepticism about the Church. Scandals have eroded the sense that the Church is worthy of one’s time, treasure, or talents. The good that churches do is often done better by other groups, …
Ship of Fools: Worship
I will admit my bias against church organ music. Why does it have to sound like this, when it could sound like this? The latter tells me about all of life: tragedy and joy, grief and laughter – that seems more like the walk of faith that I know. The former just makes me wish for a coma, which is …