The passage we heard from Job this morning is only a fraction of God’s response. Verse after verse, God recounts the wild wonders of the world that are beyond Job’s knowledge, control, and benefit. From rain in the deserts where no people live to the speed of an Ostrich, cliff dwelling vultures to clods of clay, or my personal favorite, the wild donkey who “laughs at the clamor of the town”—we witness a montage of the created order from the celestial to the mundane, the animal to the atmospheric—all of it a manifestation of God’s creative and loving power. Like an Inuit elder quelling the anger of a child, God reorients Job’s sense of his place in the world with a vision of awe. And though the book of Job is considered by many to be among the most ancient literature in our scriptures, a work first performed as a drama, few books are as relevant to our time or as contemporary in their wisdom.
Read MoreWhen a good sheep like Ellen shows us the gospel, we, in turn, can do that for others. When that happens, whole flocks get pointed in the right direction, trusting that the grace of God is for them. Other sheep will have the opportunity to hear some good news, including that the good shepherd has a particular love for sheep who get lost
Read MoreOur ways of measuring worth are not how God’s system works at all. It’s as if we keep trying to thread our camels through a needle when it’s only grace that gets us through anyway. The young man’s camel was his wealth, which Jesus told him to give away. He would tell us the same thing about our own camels, to let them go.
Read MoreIn my experience, relationships that are based on score-keeping, on measuring tit for tat, relationships that are essentially transactional, are not very healthy. And what’s more, they aren’t the kind of relationships that God calls us into in order to reveal God’s love to the world. And as much as we resist taking a close look at Job and Jesus’ teaching on divorce, I believe that these two passages have much to teach us about relationships, both with other people and with God.
Read MoreThe world of earthly power has no room for children. Jesus knows this well, for his birth came when Ceasar demanded a census, a tool for taxes and building armies, and there was no room in the inn. The world that has no room for children is one that has no room for life. As Thomas Merton writes, “We live in the time of no room…The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.” This is a world that has no room for children and their play.
Read MoreAll roads lead to the foot of the cross, the place God expects to find us once we’ve outgrown our distractions and illusions of self-sufficiency. It’s the place God expects to find us when we need to know if there is hope for us and for the world around us. It’s the place where God answers yes. So Happy Fall Kick-Off Sunday, friends. We ask for God’s blessing as we begin a new season of learning and growing in the way of the cross. And we give thanks for all the roads that have led us to this place.
Read MoreSalvation will always be scandalous. If we seek to bring the Kingdom of God into the world, we will always run the risk of being offended by its breadth and its challenge. But we will also have a choice. We can turn away from what offends us, pushing it to the margins and showing partiality to wealth and ease. Or we can lean in and seek encounters with the people and places that scandalize us. Jesus shows us the faithful choice in today’s Gospel, if we are brave enough to follow where he leads.
Read MoreOur lives, from beginning to end, are part of a cosmic love story. The story that contains our lives is this: that God so loved the world that Christ came among us, stretched out his arms upon the cross, and drew us all to him, in love and reconciliation. That’s the gospel, the fundamental truth that shapes and gives meaning to all of our days. It’s especially helpful to remember that big picture when we find ourselves bogged down in difficult days.
Read MoreThe 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.
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