They name the realities, do these prophets, Amos and Hosea, Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, the realities are called out, sobbed and spoken and shouted. It is not so much that they prophesy as in foretelling, though often the …
Continue readingHebrews 11:1 “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I sat in a circle of friends on New Years Eve, struggling to come up with a resolution for the New Year. I tend …
Continue reading“Americans celebrate the holidays with an orgy of value destruction.” These are the words of the economist Jared Waldfogel, making the case for why we shouldn’t give gifts. And from a microeconomic standpoint, that case is apparently pretty easy to …
Continue readingIsaiah 9:1-7 All over the place, churches are having Christmas pageants, however known. Whether fancy and high-tech with lights and fabulous sets or humble and homemade, in the wings are waiting characters who are electric with excitement. It was before …
Continue reading“Advent begins with a paradox of who we are and where we are: somewhere between the darkness and the light, somewhere between the fact of darkness and the hope of light, watching and waiting for a holiness to heal us, …
Continue readingNovember 22, 2015 Job 2:8 There is nothing that whispers, growls, suggests, invites, and incarnates our worship theme of “delicious ambiguity” like Thanksgiving. Am I right? It is the holiday that puts on a sweet company face. On the delicious …
Continue readingReadings: “We live in our partial knowledge as the Dutch live on land reclaimed from the sea. We dike and fill, dredging up soil from the bed of mystery and build ourselves room to grow. And still the mystery surrounds …
Continue readingOne year during college I worked as a youth minister. As part of the job, I was in charge of the high school class on Sunday mornings. Going into my first week, I obsessed about how to make it the …
Continue readingWhen you were younger and fighting with a friend or sibling and you drew an imaginary line on the backseat of the car or used an entire roll of masking tape to create a border in the middle of your …
Continue readingOne of the responsibilities that most ministers feel keenly is that compelling opportunity to try to create in a sermon each week a window into the Mystery. We’re like journalists–always looking for the story…a personal experience, a witness: the sermon …
Continue readingA couple summers ago, I went with a group of UCGers to Plum Village Meditation Center in France. I was excited to hear one of my personal saints, Thich Nhat Hanh, in the flesh. But I also had an ulterior …
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