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A Short Apology
Since going back to work, I have been posting much less frequently. Far less than my post a day for the last 6 months. This certainly wasn’t my intention. It appears, even posting last Sunday’s sermon is hard to keep track of. That will change and I ask for your patience. One reason for this…
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No Deal.
a Sermon for Lent 3B Text: John 2:13-22 what’s the problem? Think about all of Jesus’s public ministry for a moment. There were some big spectacles like the feeding of the five thousand. There were also public condemnations, particularly of the Jewish leadership. But this story is unique. It is bold and unsettling. It is…
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It’s All About Winning
a Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, B Text: Mark 8:31-38 This is Winning? “Jesus saves.” A pithy and precise statement if ever there were one. Jesus Saves. He does. But how? From what? It is a statement too simple to be accurate. Jesus is Messiah and Liberator, Conqueror and King. But every image…
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Our Marks, Like Dust
a Sermon for Ash Wednesday, B Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 We’re trained from an early age to hate red ink. Our tests and composition papers were often so riddled with red, contrasting starkly with our own black or blue markings on the white piece of paper. Each of our teachers counted up those red marks—with…
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Belief v. Action
In church circles there is a lot of exercise around the idea that there is dichotomous relationship between our beliefs and our actions. This is particularly evident between the groups Phyllis Tickle refers to as the Social Justice Christians (ie. the Mainliners) and the Conservative Christians (conservative evangelicals and Southern Baptists). In this paradigm, one…
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To Bless or Not To Bless
That is the question I have for Monday. For the liturgical snobs out there, I know that it is Lent and we aren’t encouraged by Michno to bless in Lent, but to recite a “prayer over the people,” as was the most ancient custom of what would become the blessing much later. It is a…
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Simple Things Are Bad For You
Simple foods really are bad for us. Nutritionally, they are too easily digested, which is actually a bad thing most of the time. Heavily processed and enriched grains and sugar go through our systems inefficiently and cause us to consume even more of them. Complex foods like raw broccoli, whole grains, and proteins, are healthier.…
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Inside the Cacophony
a Homily for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, B Text:Mark 9:2-9 I walked into my poetry class completely unprepared for what was about to happen. This was years ago, back when I dreamed of becoming a writer, a playwright or poet, actually. Or at the very least the teacher of writers. It was our second…
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