At Church in the Cliff, we make a big deal about being as welcoming and inclusive of all people as we can possibly be. So it hurt a little when one of our friends pointed out that we’re not very welcoming or hospitable to people with disabilities. In church parlance, it was convicting. She was right. We’re not overtly cruel …
St. Rosetta Tharpe
Rosetta Tharpe is known as “the Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” I would go farther and say the she invented rock ‘n’ roll. She also fostered advances in the genre after it was born. But she couldn’t have done any of it without the racial and religious context in which she grew up. Rosetta Tharpe used her immeasureable natural talent …
St. Brigid of Kildare
St. Brigid of Kildare did not get to tell her own story. She was most likely illiterate, as were most people in 5th century Ireland. But stories about her circulated after her death and were eventually written down. By men. Men in the Church. And because each of her hagiographies (called “Lives” in the tradition) draws from this same oral …
St. Trayvon Martin
When we think of saints, we typically think of their virtue. Virtue, of course, implies agency. But Trayvon Martin didn’t choose any of this. My guess is that he and his family would rather have him back than to be honored as a saint. I imagine they would trade everything and more to have him back. When we look at …
The End
I don’t know if I was being clever by ending our Summer of Love series talking about ending relationships, but here we are. Ending relationships is not well or compassionately supported, not in our culture and certainly not in our churches. The irony for churches is that a part of the Gospel, if it is Good News for anyone at …
The Slippery Slope of Expansive Love
Much is lost to pre-history, but it seems that the story of marriage begins in property and power. This may seem a cynical and pessimistic view; it takes no account of the love that we share with our partners. But we must be careful not to read our ideas of love and family onto the past. Though the biological phenomena …
This is My Body
(We are so grateful for our intern, Lindsey Mosher Trozzo, who gave us the gift of this homily on Sunday.) This is my body. This is my body that grounds me, that bring me down to earth when I get lost in my head, my hypotheticals, my plans, my criticisms, my should and should-nots. This is my body that reminds …
What is Love?
We are told in 1 John 4:16 that “God is love.” It seems a simple and, by now, obvious thing to say, but what does it really mean? It turns out that most of what we think it means has been determined by straight, white men, which means that our understanding of love and all its related fields – sex, …
It’s Over
We’ve finally reached the end of our series on the Minor Prophets. It seems that the people of Israel reached the end of their rope. After centuries of waiting to regain their status in the region, after watching Assyria, Babylon, and Persia fall, yet failing to become autonomous much less regain control of their Promised Land, the Israelites decide to …
MAGA: On Nostalgia and Its Discontents
In 2008, this country endured the greatest economic slide since the Great Depression. By 2016, we had recovered our losses and then surpassed our previous heights. Still, something was not quite right. Many Americans felt that America was no longer great. They wanted to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Now this has gone from a campaign slogan to a rally cry …