Oh, the dilemmas of pastoral ministry. Here I sit, looking at a beautiful piece of art for Sunday’s order of worship, trying to determine whether to cover the nakedness of the man helped by the Good Samaritan.
Our disaster-relief success hasn’t moved the needle in addressing poverty. We need to ask why
Because churches and faith-based organizations do disaster relief so well, we assume what works for communities recovering from a fire will be what works for a family experiencing food insecurity or poverty. Most victims of poverty suffer because of systems designed to help some people thrive at the expense of others’ languishing.
Church in the Age of Trump
Depending on who you talk to, last Wednesday morning we either woke up to a different world or we woke up to a depressingly predictable one. While none of the pollsters or aggregators really saw the results of this election…
Like a good neighbor: The U.S. and Cuba
The United States is not there — at least not in relationship to our close neighbor, Cuba. Thanks to the tenacity of the church in the U.S. committed to God’s justice and love, and to President Obama, our neighborliness is…
Who is the Good Samaritan now?
Another day, another police officer-involved shooting. These national tragedies are happening with frightening regularity. So much so that we don’t need narration; we know the end from the beginning: “He had a gun.” “I felt that my life was in…
Retweeting mercy in the midst of darkness
In her July 10 message at the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber retells the story of the Merciful Samaritan. The message is timely, coming as it does on the heels of a week —…
No more Samaritanizing
When we Samaritanize others we imply that they are fatally flawed by identities like their race or religion, their ethnicity or their uniforms, and thus are unworthy of care, understanding or perhaps even life itself.
Brexit, Trump and the Stranger
The news of the British referendum shook the world this week, sending financial markets into turmoil, prompting rage from British Millennials, and inspiring no small amount of fear in an American public. Few waited very long to draw comparisons between…
Are you a first responder?
“Do you consider yourself a first responder?” The question seemed odd at first, but it was sincere. The person who asked had not mistaken me for a firefighter or a police officer or a paramedic. Something different was meant. Not…