Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s as an independent Baptist in an all-white church, the first 20 Februarys of my life came and went without any awareness of either Lent or Black History Month. Liturgy was considered something the…
With Invictus Howard Goodall tells Christ’s Passion mainly through texts written by women
When Howard Goodall set out to write a fresh choral work on the Passion of Christ, he knew full well the giants who had trod this ground before, especially the ever-present Johann Sebastian Bach. Yet he also knew the overwhelming…
‘For fear of the Jews’: Confronting Christian anti-Semitism
As we enter into the season of Lent and draw near to Holy Week, we dig deep into narratives of the coming suffering and death of Jesus, and into what has been — across the centuries — a time when…
During Lent, I’m learning to walk with a limp
As a small-town Southern Baptist, I had little if any idea what Lent was until I lived with Scoop. Scoop, my junior-year roommate at the University of Georgia, was a somewhat intermittently practicing Catholic — he called himself a “High…
This year, I need Lent
I told a friend, “I need Lent this year.” I have practiced Lent in some form or fashion since middle school, although not always with the greatest of intentions, and before it was commonplace in Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-adjacent circles. One…
Free Lenten daily devotionals offered
Journey to the Cross, a devotional series for Lent, returns to d365.org, beginning on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 17. This free series features Scripture, prayer and brief meditative thoughts accompanied by gentle music. This year’s themes and writers are as follows….
New book explores pain of preaching after a suicide in the congregation
In January 2009, I sat down at my desk to think about the upcoming season of Lent. I was the pastor at Wilton Baptist Church in Wilton, Conn. I had been there for just over two years but was the…
Even now, we must not rush to Easter. First, comes the middle space of Holy Saturday
While Jesus is indeed alive, the reality of God’s Kingdom is far from being fully realized in our world. Ultimately, rushing to the goodness of Easter is part of an escapist mentality only afforded to the most privileged among us.
A global pestilence stalks in darkness. Will we tempt God or take up our cross? | #intimeslikethese
We can hang onto Jesus with the right hand, grasp our brothers and sisters with the left, and take one bold step into the gathering gloom of Holy Week. That’s what Lent has always been about. That’s what it’s about now, amid a global pestilence that stalks in the darkness.
Repent and be healed: Our response to the global pandemic has revealed our sin | #intimeslikethese
No, the COVID-19 virus is not some kind of divinely unleashed pestilence to punish us. But what seems clear is this: It is not the disease itself that has revealed our sin, it is the ways we have responded that have condemned us to our current misery and suffering.
How not-so-random acts of kindness from strangers transformed my latest air travel odyssey
“God has got this,” the attendant in the airport travelers’ lounge said. Indeed.
Lent 2020: Improvising grace and embracing repentance, civility and dissent in ‘a time of national urgency’
Whatever else, Lent is the church’s reminder that we are ever improvising, seizing the half-baked idea or the unexpected moment of irony, tragedy or failure as an occasion for grace.