• Cross or Crucifix?

    Cross or Crucifix?

    I still don’t know why Christians wear crosses. The cross was a Roman torture device. The cross was the vehicle the state used to kill insurrectionists and rebels. It was like the medieval head on a pike. It wasn’t reserved for normal criminals or representative of criminal justice in the first century. It was how…

  • Trinity

    Trinity

    The Trinity is the most important concept in the church. It is important in the way that things are important. It has this essential character, it is the source of great conflict, and it has some brilliance to it. And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is about as confusing, ill-defined, and poorly executed of…

  • Peace

    Peace

    I’m not sure there is a more foundational element to the Christian faith than peace. We want peace, we crave peace. Peace to us is safety and security. It is silence and quiet. It is solitude in chaos. It is the sound of birds chirping and streams bubbling when we are resting in the grass.…

  • Why Bernie Sanders hates the media

    Why Bernie Sanders hates the media

    Does Sen. Bernie Sanders hate the media? According to Paul Heintz, the political editor for Seven Days, the answer is yes. In this interview for On the Media, Heintz shows Sen. Sanders’ penchant for calling out the media and his ongoing distrust of it. He argues that “the media have never really noticed how Sanders sees them. Because…

  • Absolution

    For some churches, it’s all about sin. For others, it’s all about that grace. And for still others, there is the regular insistence that we don’t talk about one without the other. We don’t talk about Good Friday without Easter. It makes a certain sense, doesn’t it? that we so often tend to focus on the…

  • It is not so among you

    It is not so among you

    Jesus shares with them what the Kingdom of GOD is like, GOD’s Great Economy, not so they have something to look forward to later, but so that they would live in it now. Right here. On the road to Jerusalem. The Great Sort has already begun Proper 24B  |  Mark 10:35-45 The Approach Before we…

  • Confession

    Confession

    “We don’t do confession.” I remember the conversations I used to have as a child about church. And it was usually how we do things differently or what is an E-piss-co-palian? Which always was accompanied with laughter. This childhood was in Alpena, a small city in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Alpena was largely Polish, then;…

  • Prayers of the People

    Prayers of the People

    I try not to be a micromanager. Preparing our worship, inspiring, gathering, inviting into participation is a big part of what I am called to do as a priest. The training we receive in seminary is intended to give us a certain expertise. My writing training has given me certain skills (and ego) to lead…