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Debt Sucks the Life Out Of Us
There’s a moment at the end of a night when the sounds have disappeared and conversations fade. You look around and see the stragglers are all that’s left of the party. Often ones who helped set up or planned to help clean up. Ones who wait until everyone else is gone so that the real conversation can…
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Invited to the Feast
Rose and I were newlyweds. We were married almost a year when I lost my ring. It was at the end of school–literally the last day of my second year, and I was about to drive back over the border from Ontario into Michigan. Needless to say, I was freaking out. Proper 19C | Luke…
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When Jesus Tweets
This morning’s gospel is like a Facebook post. It begins divisively, then starts to sound rational, and then ends with an unattainable call to action full of shame. With a passage like this, Jesus could totally win the internet. Proper 18C | Luke 14:25-33 I’m gonna guess that like any good Facebook post, there’s going…
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Insatiable Desire – How Jesus provides the antidote to what is killing us
Jesus is a terrible dinner guest. One would think that by now the Pharisees would know better than to invite Jesus for dinner. He’s always complaining about how we treat the help and how exclusive the guest list is. He calls us out in front of our friends and all but calls us greedy and…
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Suffering and Salvation – Liberation as the work of the community
A preacher was on vacation and came home to a flood “of Biblical proportions.” He spoke of needing to canoe out of his Louisiana house and escape the devastation. That the preacher is notorious for a sense of ill-will to many and is politically powerful gave the experience a sense of delicious irony. Proper 16C…
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Blurring the Lines – How Jesus Alters Expectations Of Justice
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” As much as I don’t want to preach on this gospel today, I fear for the thousands of churches and church goers who will wrestle with such a tricky and troubling passage. And how many…
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Watching By Forgiving Debts
There’s a single word in the Lord’s Prayer we often miss. Remember a few weeks ago how the disciples asked Jesus how to pray? He responded with a familiar prayer about hallowing, heaven, and daily bread. Then he says And forgive us our sins,for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. Did you notice? Jesus links sin and indebtedness.…
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Inheritance Transformed
It feels like we live in a divided country. But nothing divides more than inheritance. It sicks brother against brother. Sister against sister. Inheritance is not the blessing of ongoing protection but the curse of future division. In my own family, I’ve seen family members force a sibling to pay a double share while a…