This month I am preaching each Sunday at the Rosedale Congregational United Church of Christ. The title of my sermon yesterday was “Good News of the Kingdom,” from Mark 1:15. Updated terminology. In the first part of the sermon I…
Six movies that tell us something about God
Mars and beyond—expanding our theology of God’s universe
We now have definitive evidence for organic molecules, both in the atmosphere and in the rocks of Mars. On Earth, organic molecules are the stuff of life. This could mean life—microbial life, that is—exists now on Mars, or it could…
Don’t Push the River
Our guide shouted, “Don’t push the river!” I was white-water rafting (poorly) down the Amazon. With the raft swirling and the water splashing, the guide’s command made about as much sense as choosing what you are supposed to do with…
Holy dreams
Beyond belief
Where is God?
John’s prologue is actually a poem that introduces major themes that will be developed in the unfolding of the story that follows. It is a beautiful poem about the mystery of incarnation. I love the story about two mischievous boys,…
epiphany.
If you’re a long time reader of my work* you may be aware of the fact that not only am I an exceedingly mediocre person of faith, but that I get paid for my mediocrity in the practice of said…
Important origins
Important Origins (Part 2 in the series, How God changes our neighborhood) In the first part of this series I set up this idea that the key theological concept of Christmas, the Incarnation, can be boiled down into a simple…
There is purpose
There’s an argument going on. Sometimes you have to listen closely, but it’s rumbling beneath the polite noise of our sophisticated society like the background radiation of the Big Bang, filling every black hole as it sweeps across an infinite…
A failure of imagination on reading Scripture, part 1
God sure seems to get a bad rap sometimes, even from his followers. Well, that may go just a bit far. God’s word gets a bad rap much more frequently than he does. How should we handle this? How about…
Soar past tithing on your way to becoming wildly generous
Should we forget tithing? Is it passé? Does it set up an artificial target on which too few people actually agree? Tithing seems like an obvious principle–10 percent of your income–yet too often it becomes a negative point for confusion,…