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Take a Bite Out of Jesus
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
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
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
[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
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…
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Relearning How to Color
When I was young, I was always drawing. I would watch Commander Mark and draw along, making all sorts of pictures of spaceships and alien planets. I would make up my own comic book characters, sketch them out, write back stories, and imagine whole universes. I’ve always seen myself as creative. As someone who creatively…
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No Difference? Really? You Don’t See It? Seriously?
You know I don’t like the easy trap of Left vs. Right. I’m not a Platonist. I don’t dig on dualism. Nor do I take the easy escape hatch of declaring liberals and conservatives are all the same. Lame! But I really can’t help but wonder why people can’t see the difference between these two: It…
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Learning How To Sing
I remember a specific moment of great happiness from my childhood. It was the day I learned I no longer had to sing at school. I didn’t dread singing until fourth grade. The year I had my first crush, my first acknowledgement that boys and girls really were different, the first realization that what I did…