The Gospel of John, of course, was written well before synthetic fertilizers and modern dwarf wheat. Most people lived, more or less, on a bread that was rich and nutritious, with grains grown from soils teaming with the microbes that sustain plant life. And yet, the difference between modern and ancient wheat offers us insight into the the bread of the ancestors and the living bread that Jesus gives. It is a difference of direction and relationship; fast food on the way to something else or a feast at which we linger.
Read MoreThis is the third week in the Bread of Life Discourse, and today the narrative takes a decisive turn. We still begin with Christ’s proclamation that he is the Bread of Life. But whereas before our instructions included seeing him, believing in him, and coming to him, now our instructions include eating the bread, which is his very flesh. Things just got real. As theologian and professor Robert Koch explains, in this portion of narrative, we move from metaphor to Eucharistic reality.
Read MoreJesus is the image of God and the image of the human being fully alive. If we want to see what human life can be, we look to Jesus; like a climber following the beta of someone who has already sent a route. The challenge is to discern what this imitation looks like, we have to take the beta and figure out how these moves will work for our bodies, our circumstances and lives. Jesus shows us what is possible, the pattern of ascent toward God, but much work is needed to make that a reality.
Read MoreThe bread of life metaphor is complicated and multifaceted and will definitely take more than one sermon to unpack. Luckily, the lectionary serves us bread for the next several weeks. But a good place to start is with what we learn today, from Jesus and from David. We learn what the bread of life is not.
Read MoreOurs is an improvisational God, working from a loose script, and since God invites our response, our freedom, the work of God’s mission is open and adaptive. There is a narrative God has in mind, one that involves the healing of the world, but God is ready to incorporate new offers, to accept our acts of freedom and work them into the whole.
Read MoreThe lectionary theme for today, Year B, Proper 10, is heads: we’re either lifting them up or cutting them off. As a theological theme, the idea of the head is multifaceted, if a little obvious. But I love a challenge, so here we go. Our heads are home to our brains as well as four out of our five senses, so they are arguably the most important part of our bodies. In fact, in the English language, the head often serves as a euphemism for the whole person.
Read MoreThere are still plenty of maps on offer that tell us who is good and who is bad, how we can be successful and educated and righteous. There are many maps that make us feel safe with defined borders and well lit streets. But just as in Mark’s day, none of these will guide us to the landscape of God’s reign. The terrain of God’s kingdom is a place of paradox. It is not safe, at least to the constructed egos of our self-regard, but in it we can live free of fear. It is a wild and open country, unbounded, and yet it is illumined by the light of God’s good blessing. This kingdom is a place where wholeness comes without price and all debts are forgiven. It is a landscape where the respected and the ashamed, the somebodies and the nobodies, lose all the identities that defined them and are satisfied only as beloved children of God.
Read MoreWhen he opened the back of the trailer, the hogs stumbled out into the open sunshine and lush green grass and just…laid down. They were stunned by the fresh air and soft ground and space to move around. They did not know what to do with their freedom. Now I know it’s risky to compare my congregation to hogs on a farm, but bear with me. We have a lot more in common with those hogs than you might think.
Read MoreSomewhere East of Santa Fe and before Amarillo, the car fell into a quiet lull — the girls in the back occupied with reading and coloring books, the on again off again DVD player; Emily beside me writing in her journal. I drove, watching the roadside, noting the birds among the sagebrush. My mind wandered, rambling across the landscape so strange and beautiful and sparse to my Mid-South imagination.
In these quiet moments on the road I can become philosophical. And since I’d been thinking about the Trinity, trying to write a sermon for this strange Sunday, my mind turned there.
Read MoreWhat is your sermon? When your faith is at its strongest, what would you preach? If I had more room in this pulpit, I’d invite you all up here today to preach your own sermons. Because that’s really what Pentecost is all about.
Read MoreThe author uses the word kosmos, or, world, no less than 13 times in this passage. And frankly, all 13 uses are pretty confusing. “I am no longer in the world but they are in the world.” “They do not belong to the world just as I do not belong in the world.” “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” What are we to make of this? Are we meant to embrace or reject the world we find ourselves in? What’s the difference between the world we inhabit and the place that Christ now exists? And again, can we bridge the two?
Read MoreLet’s be honest: don’t you hate it when someone else gets a good deal that you think you have missed out on? The most trivial, real life example I can think of this past week is when I saw that some people got local strawberries for $4 per quart when I paid $8. I was a bit envious. But as the stakes get higher in the world of deals, the discomfort increases.
Read MoreFor anyone who has had to go off map, you know it’s not an easy thing to do. But in a million different ways, the life of faith is about just that, going off map, past the terrain we know. Otherwise it would be called knowledge, not faith. Faith really begins at the edge of the map, where the search for joy, authenticity, and adventure begins.
Read MoreWe speak a great deal of love these days. But the sort of love that endures, the kind of love that enables the care the world needs, or the salvation through sacrifice that Jesus accomplished, is one that dwells in the particular. As Willie James Jennings writes in The Christian imagination, the problem lies in how we’ve viewed the the world; the kinds of words and images we’ve used to understand and describe it. Jennings writes that “A Christian doctrine of creation is first a doctrine of place and people, of divine love and divine touch, of human presence and embrace, and of divine and human interaction.” He goes on to say that “Christianity is in need of a place to be fully Christian,” and that our “segregated mentality” is bound to “the loss of a world where people were bound to the land.”
Read MoreChrist comes and stands among us, that’s the Gospel. And you know what else is the Gospel? That you and I are witnesses of these things.
Read MoreBack when shaking hands was safe and regular, the receiving line after a Sunday service often included several confessions of regret and explanations of absence. For instance, I might hear something like, “I’m so sorry I haven’t been here, I’ve been out of town,” to which I usually respond with, “there’s no need to apologize for not being able to be in two places at once!” I also hear things like, “I’m so sorry I haven’t been here, my father’s been terribly ill,” to which I quickly respond with, “please don’t apologize for taking care of your family!” But my favorite goes something like this, “I’m so sorry I haven’t been here…Sundays are hard,” to which I heartily respond with, “do not apologize, if I didn’t work here, I probably wouldn’t be here either.”
Read MoreIf you carry around Impossibly Heavy Things, Easter is for you. Maybe you’ve steered your ship off course by mistake and it’s stuck pretty hard in the sand. Or maybe you’ve been carrying around shame, and it’s super heavy. Or maybe, by virtue of being human, you’ve just make mistakes and need forgiveness. Easter is when our stories begin to turn. No sin is too big for God to forgive. No stone is too heavy for God to move in the resurrection.
Read MoreEaster is a time to celebrate the joy of resurrection, and this year, for the joy of regathering. But this Great Vigil reminds us that it’s also a time when we join our voices with all of God’s people throughout history who offer praise and thanksgiving to the risen Lord, a time to take our place as keepers of the story.
Read MoreJesus came to throw a counter weight against the erratic spin of our off balance world, offering a liberation that returns us to the truly human form—limited, dependent, living fully only in the restful reality of God’s enough. To accomplish this return he came to make a sacrifice, an offering of himself, that would become a pattern for all those seeking the way toward freedom.
Read MoreAt first, I was quite stumped about what to say from the pulpit today. On one hand, I want to celebrate our regathering, but on the other hand, we are entering Holy Week, a time of solemn reflection and remembrance. What I realized, however, is that the Holy Spirit is not moving primarily through my words today. I see the Holy Spirit most clearly this morning in the simple act of all of us gathered together in this place to worship in familiar and comforting ways.
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