theology
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God Is a Lousy Name
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4 min read
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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Talking GOD: the Tony Jones Challenge
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3 min read
[Tony Jones recently challenged progressive theo-bloggers to talk about GOD. You can find the rules here and check out the follow-up post. The exercise has so far been fruitful for me, as I’ve written a couple of posts that will go up in the next few days about two aspects of GOD: GOD as the…
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Grumble if you must, but then trust
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7 min read
a Homily for Proper 14B Text: John 6:35, 41-51 In our gospel story, Jesus turns his attention from the crowd to the Jewish leadership. He has been talking about bread—the bread from heaven. He makes reference to the story told in Exodus. It goes a little like this. The Hebrew people, living in Egypt for…
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He Truly Lived
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4 min read
a Homily for the Celebration of the Life of Fred Rouse Text: John 11:21-27 One of those curious things we deal with as Christians is that even though we believe in the resurrected Christ, we still fear death. In our own lives and to our loved ones. Despite all assurances to the contrary, death is…
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Why I Don’t Preach Daily Living Sermons
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3 min read
If you’ve been around the church, you know there are many different genres of sermons. With names like “biblical” and “narrative,” we are often asked to classify and name our preaching style. My own style falls into several categories, but I’m pretty sure there is one it does not: the “daily living” sermon. I’ve been…
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A Theology of Personhood
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6 min read
When Rose and I began planning our family, Rose became pregnant easily. I was finishing seminary and had a position lined up and everything seemed to be going well. Then one weekend night, Rose woke me up to tell me something was wrong. She had severe cramping. Then when she went into the bathroom, she…