• We Are More Than Our Kings

    We Are More Than Our Kings

    In 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, we find a grieving Saul and a grieving God searching for a new king. Even though God still doesn’t want the people to have a king; even as there is a king still on the throne. Even with our lust for power, we’re still driven to love. Proper 6B  | 1…

  • Why I Confess – Empire

    Why I Confess – Empire

    Confronting the truth about our people is hard. Especially when the truth is about the evil of empire, oppression, and persecution. But that’s no excuse to avoid or deflect–we must engage with it. Arrogance and dealing with the enduring terror of empire “Anglicans persecuted everybody.” I felt my body squirm. The hairs on the back…

  • Making Home

    Making Home

    Jesus’s return home in Mark reminds me of the movie musical, The Greatest Showman. God’s dream is made, not by or for the powerful, but by the misfits for all of us. And for it to work, we must all have a part to play. Jesus and “The Greatest Showman” Proper 5B  |  Mark 3:20-35…

  • Swindled By Authoritarianism

    Swindled By Authoritarianism

    We mistake extremism in belief for political extremism. The rise of authoritarianism isn’t only tied to political division or partisanship. Authoritarianism is an extremism we can find anywhere in politics. Why our fear of division blinds us to the real threat to democracy We’ve taken it as gospel that we’re divided. It seems like we…

  • Hallowing the Sabbath

    Hallowing the Sabbath

    The Pharisees confront Jesus because his disciples break Sabbath law. Jesus turns the story around to show how few of them are really keeping the Sabbath. We could easily say the same about us. In Breaking the Sabbath, Jesus seeks to keep it. Proper 4B  |  Mark 2:23-3:6 “One sabbath Jesus and his disciples were going…

  • Love – of One and Three

    Love – of One and Three

    Dealing with love isn’t just for weddings: it gets to the very nature of God. From the Presiding Bishop’s sermon at the royal wedding last week to the Pentecost itself, we’re finding the very nature of God isn’t out there and other, but right here among, in, the very binding of us together. What actually…

  • Beyond Despair: Love

    Beyond Despair: Love

    There is a common cry of despair in the people of Gaza that sounds so much like West Virginia coal miners and residents of Peoplestown in Atlanta, Georgia. A cry of hopelessness and existential angst we show little willingness to assuage. The global response to the Gaza protests and Israeli gunfire last week has brought…

  • We are the Medium

    We are the Medium

    The message of Pentecost is about the power of God. But that doesn’t mean what we normally think it means because God’s power isn’t over us, it’s power with us. In Pentecost, both the medium and the message matter Pentecost  |  Acts 2:1-21 I don’t know if you heard, but there was a big wedding…