Who the hell is Mary Magdalene? James was the brother of Jesus, the head of the church in Jerusalem, but he is nowhere to be found on Easter morning. Paul was the founder of all the Gentile churches across the Mediterranean, but Easter morning found him still busy persecuting anyone who wasn’t Jewish enough. And Peter was the head of …
The Truth About Ruth
This Eastertide series is ostensibly about resurrection displayed in Scripture other than the Easter story, but it’s turning out to be just as much about ruining our favorite childhood stories from the Bible. This week, we took on Ruth. If you’re like me, you grew up thinking this was one of the great romances of the Bible. Ruth and Boaz …
Myth and Reality
Many of us probably haven’t read the story of Noah’s ark since we were kids. If you read it again, you might find some surprises. I always had this idea that Noah was exhorting the people around him to get on the boat, but they just mocked him as a fool building a boat in the desert. That’s not what …
The Fecund Abyss
During Lent, we were on a journey toward death. What we discover in Easter is that there is a connection between the tomb and the womb, but what kind? The abyss of non-being has become the fear of modern humanity. Once Nietzsche killed God, we weren’t sure what we were here for. But Nietzsche’s conception of the abyss is both …
The Alpha and the Omega
Our plan for Eastertide this year is to take the Gospel of Mark seriously: the promise of resurrection, but not the experience of it. What other evidence do we find in Scripture and in our lives that resurrection is real? I asked this question of my Bible-nerd friends on Facebook and suggested that the real answer was “the whole Bible.” …
When We Rise Up
It’s unclear whether the Gospel of Mark should be read with a mullet or a beret. It was ignored for the first six centuries of Christian history because it is clumsily written and has an odd narrative structure. But now we have post-modernism and what was considered clumsy is now considered a point of view; what was odd is now …
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 …
Welcome to the New Life
We had a great time at Oak Cliff Earth Day handing out free cookies. Thanks to everyone who baked and helped prepare and set up and tear down and everyone who just came and hung out at the booth. I love that we have such meaningful (and not so meaningful) conversation no matter where we are and have so much …
The Intimacy of Faith
The Gospel of John is often regarded as a very “spiritual” text, perhaps even an abstract, theological text. Some think it was included in the canon largely because it made claims about Jesus that other Gospels did not, claims that had become important to the Church, such as Jesus being God and stuff. This, in turn, creates the possibility of …
From Death into Life
This is the season when we sit with death and find the way to new life. Doug Pagitt says that every preacher has four sermons that get preached over and over and over. I guess this is one of my four. I’ll take it. Last night was our Maundy Thursday service. It was a very Church in the Cliff night. …
- Page 1 of 2
- 1
- 2