August 2012
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“Legitimate Rape”: a Watershed Moment
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2 min read
Growing up in the 1980s and 90’s, I was inundated with the PC backlash. As in, the public frustration on the part of conservatives toward 1970s era political correctness. Many spent the 1990s screaming about rampant political correctness as if it were some plague on humanity that people ask other people to be respectful. Heaven forbid we champion generosity,…
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Take a Bite Out of Jesus
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6 min read
a Homily for Proper 15B Text: John 6:51-58 The first thing we notice about the gospel pericope we read this morning is that Jesus is still talking about eating. It seems as if he is always talking about food, doesn’t it? The manna, the bread, the bread of life. I am the bread of life.…
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God Is a Lousy Name
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4 min read
In seminary, my Hebrew professor explained the choice we have in dealing with describing GOD. To begin with, we traditionally don’t use GOD’s name in scripture. We use a marker. Wherever the name is used, it is replaced with GOD or LORD in caps. The name was first written in ancient Hebrew, which does not…
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The Great Storyteller
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5 min read
A few years ago, in the summer, I would scoop up my precocious three year-old and we would brave the Georgian heat to go for a walk. “Long walk or short walk,” I would ask. “Long walk,” she replied. As if there were any other kind to her. We would take off down the road.…
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Talking GOD: the Tony Jones Challenge
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3 min read
[Tony Jones recently challenged progressive theo-bloggers to talk about GOD. You can find the rules here and check out the follow-up post. The exercise has so far been fruitful for me, as I’ve written a couple of posts that will go up in the next few days about two aspects of GOD: GOD as the…
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Grumble if you must, but then trust
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7 min read
a Homily for Proper 14B Text: John 6:35, 41-51 In our gospel story, Jesus turns his attention from the crowd to the Jewish leadership. He has been talking about bread—the bread from heaven. He makes reference to the story told in Exodus. It goes a little like this. The Hebrew people, living in Egypt for…