EDITOR’S NOTE: In an effort to report on the prophetic witness of Christians in America today, RLC has run several posts in the past year on the Moral Movement, which began in North Carolina and has now spread to 14…
What made Jesus angry?
In the healing of the leper in Mark 1:40-45 the text reads in the NRSV, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” There is a footnote that says, “Other ancient authorities read anger.” There are some…
How hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God!
I’m not a Christian because it makes my life easier; to the contrary, it makes my life harder. It’s easier to fear than it is to love It’s easier to hold grudges than it is to forgive It’s easier to…
Why haven’t I seen ashes smeared on the steeple?
The ashes of Ash Wednesday mark our bodies with a deeply existential crisis: our death is unavoidable, even as we live. The ashes are dead matter smeared on our living bodies. They stir our imaginations of grieving prophets dressed in…
Using gender-neutral language for God
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…
Scar-friendly places
Scars have a bad reputation. They’re branded as the bullies on the playground, the bad apples in the barrel, the “Debbie Downer” of the party. We ban them from our conversations. We send them to sit in the corner by…
The importance of the images and metaphors Jesus didn’t use
I went back in time this past Christmas. Once again I was a child sitting on the floor working my way through a lego instruction manual building a castle. Only this time the castle wasn’t black, it was light gray…
Come ye sinners
Remembering Thomas Merton
Growing up in rural northwest Missouri, I didn’t have much opportunity to know people who belonged to the Catholic Church. And then during my years in two Baptist colleges and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that didn’t afford much possibility…
The painful inevitability of moral conflict
I did not get an invitation…
Much to my surprise, no one invited me to a recent gathering in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. According to news stories, hundreds of evangelical pastors attended sessions at the Baton Rouge River Center in order to learn how to run successfully…
Rethink this church thing
Does your congregation exhibit kingdom of God characteristics? An oft-repeated television commercial captured my attention the other day. I watched people use a ribbon to see how far their money would stretch into retirement. Finally, one lady, surprised by how…