Last week, we were coping with despair in the face of immense problems. This week I made the turn toward anger. The chapter we read in Patricia K. Tull’s Inhabiting Eden focused on the prophet Jeremiah. The background of the scene is that the Babylonians are poised to siege Jerusalem. Jeremiah is going around telling everyone of the danger. He …
Creation Care for Christians: Fairness
This week we talked about environmental fairness, but we discovered that this is not a simple calculation. In theory, according to Scripture, there are the bad people that covet everything and the good people who are impoverished and oppressed. This is certainly the broad scope of the problem. There are certainly the rich and the powerful who think they have …
Creation Care for Christians: Animals
In Chapter 6 of Inhabiting Eden, Patricia Tull enumerates the terrible ways we treat animals, especially in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). I encourage you to read this list if you have the stomach for it. If you are easily traumatized by the suffering of animals, I recommend skipping that part of the chapter. You probably know it all, anyway. …
Creation Care or Christians: Food
Y’all know I love food. I was at home in New Orleans where the primary lunch conversation was what we would have for dinner. Our conversation on Sunday was a little different. It was largely about restriction, what we won’t eat and why. That’s a good conversation to have, especially when the environment is our focus. We talked about the …
Creation Care for Christians: Pride and Idolatry
Even in progressive Christian circles, I frequently find myself applauding a position a writer takes while I cringe at the path they take to get there. To use an example from not-progressive circles, I’m glad that more evangelicals are opening their churches to queer people. However, I often hear phrases like, “We’re all sinners.” Or, “Jesus died for all of …
Creation Care for Christians: What Happened?
When I began seminary, one of the first things I was asked to read was an essay by Simone Weil. It advised that, in our studies, we should always go slow and pay attention. It’s somewhat of a cruel joke, given that the next four years involved being so overwhelmed with assignments that such a thing was impossible. Still, the …
Creation Care for Christians: Who Are We?
In seminary, my Hebrew professor gave us a simple hermeneutic, a method of interpreting Scripture. Take any verse or passage and, if this was all you knew, ask these questions: 1) Who am I? 2) Who is God? 3) What am I to do? Our study of Patricia K. Tull’s Inhabiting Eden began in earnest this week with our guest …
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 …