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Being the Millstone Church (Eating Scripture)
Eating Mark 9:38-50 Last week, Jesus foretold His death for the second time. And the for the second time, the disciples don’t get it. No surprise there. For me, this was always a given. From the first time I really heard Peter get rejected by Jesus for getting out of line to the first conscious recognition…
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Of the soil
a Homily for Proper 18B Text: Mark 7:24-37 Is Jesus a Racist? The central figures of this pericope are Jesus and the Psyrophenician Woman. This woman comes to Jesus to heal her daughter who is possessed by a demon. The last time Jesus was over here, he dispelled a host of demons. Our lectionary skipped…
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Eating Scripture: Even the Dogs Get Scraps
Today I’m kicking off a weekly video series called “Eating Scripture” in which I attempt to break apart this week’s gospel in about 4 minutes or fewer to pass out the juiciest and crunchiest bits for each of us to chew on over the weekend. This week, we dive into the text (Mark 7:24-37) which contains a…
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Confessions of an accidental feminist
Go read Rachel Held Evans’ Confessions of an accidental feminist. Very good stuff. I always laugh a little to myself when I receive a Google Alert informing me that someone on the internet has criticized me as a “bitter, angry woman” intent on destroying the Church with my “radical feminist agenda.” I laugh because if these…
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Faith Before Understanding
a Homily for Proper 16B Text: John 6:56-69 What is this? Jesus has brought the people here through a swirling storm of teachings about faith, understanding, and love. As they arrive to the safety of the synagogue, he takes all of that teaching and he mixes in their likely confusion about literal and metaphorical…
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Take a Bite Out of Jesus
a Homily for Proper 15B Text: John 6:51-58 The first thing we notice about the gospel pericope we read this morning is that Jesus is still talking about eating. It seems as if he is always talking about food, doesn’t it? The manna, the bread, the bread of life. I am the bread of life.…
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God Is a Lousy Name
In seminary, my Hebrew professor explained the choice we have in dealing with describing GOD. To begin with, we traditionally don’t use GOD’s name in scripture. We use a marker. Wherever the name is used, it is replaced with GOD or LORD in caps. The name was first written in ancient Hebrew, which does not…
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The Great Storyteller
A few years ago, in the summer, I would scoop up my precocious three year-old and we would brave the Georgian heat to go for a walk. “Long walk or short walk,” I would ask. “Long walk,” she replied. As if there were any other kind to her. We would take off down the road.…