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For Proclaiming the Gospel, Context is Everything
Between the Lectionary and the world, we’re getting hit with fireballs: the kind of truth that burns and purifies, leaving us naked and lost. I know I wasn’t the only one on Sunday, talking about Jesus in the Temple. A story often referred to as a “cleansing” of the Temple, but more to the point,…
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How To Not Change the World
Our Willful Ignorance of Self I once read that Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols approaches his day with this simple practice: he only looks in the mirror once. He gets up, prepares himself for the day, and spends the rest of the day believing he’s that guy in the mirror. Regardless of what life throws…
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Looking for Change in All the Wrong Places
Darkness, Advent, and what the Light is really for. We need this reminder now more than ever. That we aren’t children of darkness. We are children of the light. That the darkness in the world is not imposed upon us by an angry GOD, but comes from fear and prejudice. We are the light-bearers, the…
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Focus on the Body
The body of Michael Brown lay in the street for over four hours. Nearly every conversation I have had or story I’ve consumed about Michael Brown has focused on the circumstances or the politics surrounding his death. We have focused on what led up to the shooting, about the character, the police, the press, the…
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What war on faith actually looks like in America
You might be under the impression that there is some kind of war on faith in our country. From the talk of many Christians, one could be easily confused by the annual declaration of a War on Christmas and the recent cries for religious liberty from those seeking to diminish ours. You may think there is some…
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From Ferguson to the Washington Football Team
The one thing that can describe everything in my Facebook feed today is this: all of our news right now involves victims of racism. We can call it something else, because we white folks want to feel better about ourselves than we deserve to feel, but systemic racism is the source of everything right now.…
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When evolution begins and our Civil War ends
There is something fitting that this date in history would be momentous. That August 20th would, in 1858 usher in the modern world and eight years later close our bloodiest chapter. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species was published 156 years ago today. The work is credited, as we know, with the birth and…
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Our Side
Our side is the side that sits with the maimed and the murdered. Our side is the side that sits with the peaceful and the beaten, the prophet and the martyr. Our side is the side that sits with the people pained by the world and wrestles with the pain itself. Grappling with hate and…