By Debra Dean Murphy

You Want It Darker by Debra Dean Murphy (12/6/2016)
...amp;vnum=yes&version=nrsv">Matthew 11:2-11</a> “They’re lining up the prisoners and the guards are taking aim.” Leonard Cohen A confession: I do not know how to write about these Advent texts as if the events of the last month (and the many months prior) were politics as usual in the United States of America. You know—a couple of slick, scripted ...
Don't Be Afraid by Debra Dean Murphy (4/26/2016)
...org/bible/readings/050116.cfm">Revelation 21:1014, 22-23 </a>(LM) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+14:23-29&vnum=yes&version=nrsv">John 14:23-29</a> “When love has entirely cast out fear, and fear has been transformed into love, then the unity brought us by our savior will be fully realized, for all [people] will be united with one another t...
Holy Family Values by Debra Dean Murphy (12/22/2015)
...unday after Christmas, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, the Commemoration of St. Stephen, and the Feast of the Holy Family. There is a wide array of readings and alternate readings, too. For churches using the text from St. Luke’s gospel, we’ll hear that the infant Jesus is now twelve years old and has gone missing in Jerusalem. Despite the decorous prose (“your father and I have been ...
A Widow's Shame and Ours by Debra Dean Murphy (11/3/2015)
... <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+12:38-44&vnum=yes&version=nrsv">Mark 12:38-44</a> For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood. Mark 12:44 By the time we get to the familiar text in this week’s Gospel reading—sometimes referred...
Nativity Politics by Debra Dean Murphy (12/31/2014)
...child. Your home is a checkpoint now. Your home is a border town. Welcome to the brawl. <a href="http://vimeo.com/33839990">“Song of the Magi,” Anaïs Mitchell</a> They are as familiar as any in the cast of characters that make up the mash-up we know as the Christmas Story. The “wise men from the East” in Matthew’s gospel join the shepher...
Rocking the Boat by Debra Dean Murphy (8/5/2014)
...ve been following a blog debate over at <a href="www.theolog.org">www.theolog.org</a> [ed. note - this blog is now part of <a href="http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs" target="_blank">http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs</a>] between a scientist of some sort, hostile to religion generally and Christianity particularly, and a pious defender of the faith. In my view, neither has been ...
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Is It You Again?" by Debra Dean Murphy (6/25/2014)
...ial on their part—nor on mine now as a Catholic. Any given group of parishioners at any given mass is not following a script about how to treat newcomers to the liturgy. And I don’t mean to suggest an absence of warmth or kindness; I’ve never experienced that in a Catholic church and I hope I’ve never communicated it. But I do think that the Eucharist—week after week, year after year—trains worshi...
What Is There To Say? by Debra Dean Murphy (4/15/2014)
.... (There are worse things). They may smirk. They may sleep. They may pity your benighted ignorance. What is there to say? You have to preach to those who are curious but who would never let on that the story of Jesus’ rising from the dead sometimes keeps them up at night. They have a healthy dose of the same skepticism as the group above, but unlike them, they have a hunch that truth c...
"Luminous Darkness" by Debra Dean Murphy (2/5/2014)
...love—indeed to make us love them in the first place.) Hoffman was an actor of astonishing intuition and virtuosity. As <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/03/philip-seymour-hoffman?CMP=fb_gu">one writer put it</a>, “he could nail a part in one punch, summoning the richness of an entire life in the smallest gesture.” It would be tempting to narrate Hoffman’s all too brief life and ...
End Times by Debra Dean Murphy (11/26/2013)
...e end, when told, is a story that never ends. From Mark Strand’s <a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/19/stra.html" target="_blank">“The Seven Last Words”</a> Christianity makes the brazen claim that Jesus of Nazareth is the end of history, and the double-entendre is deliberate. On the one hand, the consummation that Christ’s resurrection mak...
The Hell of Loneliness by Debra Dean Murphy (9/26/2013)
...m that money presents for kingdom living, Luke begins this week’s story as he did last week’s: “There was a rich man.” The tradition has named him “Dives” (Latin for “rich man,” first used by St. Jerome in the fourth century) and his life is one of prodigal extravagance and a callous disregard for his poor neighbor, Lazarus. The suffering Lazarus, who knew no peace in his earthly existence, rests,...
The Happiness Market by Debra Dean Murphy (7/30/2013)
...ana! Why did they spread this scandalous document before our eyes? If they had read it, I thought, they would have hid it. They did not recognize the lively danger that we would, through repeated exposure, catch a dose of its virulent opposition to their world. Instead they bade us study great chunks of it, and think about those chunks, and commit them to memory, and ignore them. By dipping us chi...
Ascension and Embrace by Debra Dean Murphy (5/9/2013)
...He first enters the way. John Donne, <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22937" target="_blank">Ascension</a> I was puzzling over what to write here when across my Facebook newsfeed came the <a href="http://nhregister.com/articles/2013/05/06...
A Healing Word by Debra Dean Murphy (2/20/2013)
...my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1 The gospel reading for the Second Sunday in Lent differs significantly for Protestants and Catholics. The Revised Common Lectionary appoints four pithy verses from Luke 13 which reveal a rather astonishing range of reactions in Jesus as he reckons with both his imperial pursuers and his faithless kinsmen. To...
This is Good News? by Debra Dean Murphy (12/12/2012)
... These words from this week's lectionary epistle are also the text of the introit of the mass for the third Sunday of Advent. Thus on Gaudete Sunday, when Advent's sober mood is broken a little and the pink candle on the wreath is lit, we remember that we are invited to "rejoice in the Lord always." These words are so familiar that perhaps we have lost the sense of irony in saying or singing t...
Why World Communion Sunday Is a Bad Idea by Debra Dean Murphy (10/2/2012)
... "special" is exactly what it is not. We don't think of the air we breathe as "special," the breakfast we eat as "special." These things are gifts, of course--breath and food--but it is in their givenness, their ordinariness that they are the means for life and health. In Clyde, Missouri, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration cut unleavened bread into communion wafers and gather ...
The Shepherd Who Feeds Us by Debra Dean Murphy (7/17/2012)
...st Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time There is striking beauty in the appointed texts for this weekend. And there are shepherds. And the shepherds are beautiful. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. (Jer. 23:4). The Lord is my she...
Assembling in the Spirit by Debra Dean Murphy (5/23/2012)
...erence together, Episcopalians and Baptists convene, and Presbyterians generally assemble (or assemble generally). Long-time participants in these gatherings and others like them might say, with a cynical wink, that, except for the “all together” part (and the being “in one place” part), these meetings are a real blast—productive, enjoyable, edifying . . . . . . Not.  The recent U...
Anger in Church by Debra Dean Murphy (3/7/2012)
... assistance, a man whose idea of a workout is a forty-day fast." </div> Garret Keizer, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Anger-Essays-Sometimes-Deadly/dp/0787973106/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331054854&sr=1-1">The Enigma of Anger</a>  We live in angry ti...
Living in a Material World: Lent and Our Bodies by Debra Dean Murphy (2/22/2012)
...called Christians to. Generally, “spiritual” is meant to signal a concern with matters of the heart or the soul or the deepest self. More pointedly, it almost always springs from–even as it continues to endorse–the tired dualisms of modernity that have divided body from soul, matter from spirit, earth from heaven. This false divide, as <a href="http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/XXXVIII/38-...
The Logic of the Incarnation by Debra Dean Murphy (12/20/2011)
...ry different perspectives on the coming of Christ into our world: Luke’s is earthy and political, conveying the historical contingencies (and palpable dangers) that attended the first Advent; John’s is meditative and philosophical, written in academic Greek, locating the “Word made flesh” not in the provincial politics of first-century Palestine but boldly and unapologetically in the sweeping...
It's About Us by Debra Dean Murphy (10/6/2011)
... mystery but seemingly little grace.<img class="alignright" src="http://cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/sem/a/to/28_banquete/banquete00.png" alt="" width="332" height="269" /> In Matthew’s version of the parable of the wedding banquet (would that it was Luke’s!), a king plans a great nuptial feast for his son. Twice he sends slaves to summon the invited guests but, for reasons left unsaid, “t...
The More You Get, the More You Have by Debra Dean Murphy (7/26/2011)
...ifferent sort of meal: John the Baptizer’s head on a platter. And just as women and children are included among the multitude fed on the beach (a detail unique to Matthew’s version of the story), the female sex is also represented in the account of John’s demise: Herodias, sister-in-law of Herod, asks for the head of the Baptist; her nameless daughter, with no detectable squeamishness, delivers th...
The Close-at-Hand God by Debra Dean Murphy (5/25/2011)
...ting to passages in the New Testament which speak to the unknowability of the “day or hour” of the Lord’s return. But such proof-texting did little to challenge the core flaw of rapture theology—its fundamental misreading of biblical eschatology. Within the last few days, thankfully, thoughtful essays have appeared which have noted that “tribulation” is a <a title="Patheos Website" href="http://ww...
Snorting at Death by Debra Dean Murphy (4/7/2011)
...nd the start of Holy Week and it’s not the scent of spring flowers in the air but death--as shrouded, four-days-dead Lazarus is stinking up the place. Dry bones are on Ezekiel’s mind—brittle, rattling remains beyond the stages of rot and stench. “Our hope is lost,” the people in exile say, “we are cut off completely” (37:11). The Psalm, too, the de Profundis, commonly read at funerals or ...
The Economics of Anxiety by Debra Dean Murphy (2/24/2011)
... and hymns were chosen for worship. You might—depending on your congregation’s current needs and challenges—revisit, rework, recycle, as it were, the riches of the lectionary cycle. But because Easter is so late this year—a day short of the latest date possible—there was no eighth Sunday After Epiphany in 2008 or 2005 or 2002. In fact, the factors that determine the date of the Church's prime m...
Advent Outdoors by Debra Dean Murphy (12/9/2010)
...s.org/?ql=158860033">Luke 1:47-55</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=158860011">James 5:7-10</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=158859986">Matthew 11:2-11</a> The haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. Isaiah 35:7b Wendell Berry <a href="http://www.crosscurrents.org/berry.htm">observes</a> that it’s not enough appreciated how mu...
Learning, Knowing, Doing, Being by Debra Dean Murphy (10/15/2010)
....oremus.org/?ql=154103678">Luke 18:1-8</a> Last week the <a href="http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Belief_and_Practices/religious-knowledge-full-report.pdf">Pew Research Center</a> made big news when its latest poll revealed that religious people don't know much about religion. (Atheists, though, according to the survey, are pretty savvy). Over the weekend, New York Times colum...
What Are You Afraid Of? by Debra Dean Murphy (8/4/2010)
...he gospel writer, Luke, has a habit of prefacing good news with the exhortation “Do not be afraid.” This seems a bit odd since we’re more likely to think that it’s the delivery of bad news which requires a little no-fear pep talk. But over and over Luke’s pronouncements about God’s generous ways of working in the world—about the good news of the kingdom—are preceded by the words ...
Wrath and Mercy, Law and Grace by Debra Dean Murphy (6/8/2010)
..."http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=142974483">Galatians 2:15-21</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=142974502">Luke 7:36-8:3</a> (Revised Common Lectionary) The readings for this Sunday, taken all together, create some unsettling tensions. The passage from 1 Kings recounts the refusal of Naboth the Jezreelite to sell his vineyard to his neighbor, King Ahab. When the king goes home to sulk ab...
Ascension Sunday by Debra Dean Murphy (5/12/2010)
...ref="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=140638867">Luke 24:44-53</a> St. Augustine considered the Feast of the Ascension the crown of all Christian festivals. Today we may give it an obligatory nod as we make our way liturgically from Easter to Pentecost, but we’re often not quite sure what to do with it exegetically, theologically, pastorally. The clunky literalism routinely inspired by the Luke-Acts...
Seventh Sunday of Easter by Debra Dean Murphy (5/12/2010)
... "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one." (John 17:20-21a). It seems there’s not much talk of ecumenism these days—not in books, not on blogs, not even in and among churches. Maybe that’s because forty years of dogged efforts at dialogue and mutual understanding have borne some real frui...
Grounded Hope by Debra Dean Murphy (4/2/2010)
...posing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15) Let us not mock God with metaphor, / analogy, sidestepping transcendence; / making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the / faded credulity of earlier ages: / let us walk through the door. (<a href="http://www.edow...
The Whole Package by Debra Dean Murphy (12/31/2009)
...beginning was the Word.” It’s tempting, perhaps, to see a sharp division here. To imagine that the Christmas lections are about the simple, familiar, child-friendly stuff—cradles and crèches and shepherds and angels—and that the “After-Christmas” readings have gone all grown-up and academic on us. Logos? John wants to talk Greek while we’re still ...
Religious But Not Spiritual by Debra Dean Murphy (11/11/2009)
...er Pentecost “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together..." (Hebrews 10:24) The <a href="http://www.sbnr.org/what-is-sbnr">SBNR website</a> puts ...
Kids in Church by Debra Dean Murphy (9/16/2009)
...rresistible throughout the centuries. Sentimental art within the last hundred years or so has given us the “sweet Victorian Nanny Jesus” (Philip Yancey’s memorable description), patting boys and girls on the head, admonishing them, one supposes, to eat all their vegetables and be nice to mummy. It’s hard to set aside such treacly visuals when we hear Mark say, “Then he took a little child and ...
Sex in Public by Debra Dean Murphy (7/21/2009)
...">So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.” For the next two Sundays, churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary will hear the familiar story of David and Bathsheba—a cautionary tale often invoked to warn against the dangers of sexual temptation in our own time and/or to demonstrate the humanness of the oft-idealized King David in his. It’...
The Hemorrhaging Woman by Debra Dean Murphy (6/24/2009)
...nday After Pentecost) (Image: Holy Spirit Dance, Gwen Meharg, watercolor.) When we read the story of Jesus healing the hemorrhaging woman (or a leper or a paralytic or the demon-possessed), it’s tempting to see only the private moment—a two-person encounter isolated from the larger social order. But these meetings—while they are personal and often ...
The Trinity and THE SHACK by Debra Dean Murphy (6/1/2009)
...mann and Marshall or Zizioulas and LaCugna, you may or may not be up on the latest (actually, the only) treatise on the Trinity to capture the popular imagination: a little self-published tome called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shack-William-P-Young/dp/0964729237/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243866360&sr=1-1">The Shack</a>. But you shou...
Ascension Politics by Debra Dean Murphy (5/19/2009)
...day we may give it an obligatory nod as we make our way liturgically from Easter to Pentecost, but we’re often not quite sure what to do with it theologically, pastorally, exegetically. The clunky literalism routinely inspired by the Luke-Acts vision of the ascension—Jesus rocketing upward into outer space—is not a little embarrassing. Whatever historical event lies behind the Luke-Acts narrati...
America's Bible by Debra Dean Murphy (5/12/2009)
...: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Patriots-Bible-Shaping-America/dp/1418541532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242091665&sr=1-1">The American Patriot's Bible</a>, the latest in a long line of niche-marketed Bibles. (And one that really does take the cake in that literary sub-genre). A mischievous <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Y0K2HZ79E0II/ref=cm_cr_...
The Good Shepherd by Debra Dean Murphy (5/2/2009)
...that can be lost on us. “I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). The life of a shepherd was anything but dreamy or picturesque. Taking care of sheep was dangerous, difficult, tedious work. Shepherds were, as one commentator has said, "rough around the edges, spending time in the fields ra...
Resurrection and Torture by Debra Dean Murphy (4/21/2009)
...orture the body of the victim is the ritual site where the state's power is manifested in its most awesome form." - William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist The <a href="http://documents.nytimes.com/bush-administration-terrorism-memos#p=1">government memos</a> released last week, detailing acts of torture carried out by C.I.A. operatives in the...
Flunking Lent by Debra Dean Murphy (3/23/2009)
...r, asking for mercy and cleansing, for wisdom, for an erasing of the record that stands against us—a blotting out of our iniquities. We pray that God will "create in us a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within us." And then we often act as if we must accomplish these things ourselves. We embrace Lenten disciplines—a good thing—but we easily mistake them for what they are not: self-im...
For God So Loved the World by Debra Dean Murphy (3/19/2009)
...beauty of the Bible," he says, "is that it is not clear, simple and unambiguous. Its words are puzzling, intriguing and slippery." He could have been talking about the appointed texts for this week, especially the Revised Common Lectionary's appointed reading from Numbers (Catholics read from 2 Chronicles on Sunday). The account of the plague ...
Psalms for the Journey by Debra Dean Murphy (2/26/2009)
...praise, and adoration, the Psalms—the lamenting ones, the cursing ones, and the praising ones—help us to speak truthfully before God and one another. Not for nothing, the Psalms have been called the hymnbook of the Bible. In their original setting—ancient Israel’s worship of Yahweh—the Psalms were sung by priest and people as a corporate act of devotion to the one true God. We have n...
Light for the Journey by Debra Dean Murphy (2/18/2009)
...enly show up; how Peter characteristically misreads the scene. But what happened six days earlier? Could it have any bearing on the journey to the mountaintop and on what transpired there? Most immediately Jesus had called "the crowd with his disciples" and had told them that if they wanted to become his followers they would have to deny themselves and take up their cross and foll...
King and the Kingdom by Debra Dean Murphy (1/19/2009)
...of confrontation.” The radical politics of the Kingdom that King envisioned—for the church and the nation—did not endear him to either; it got him killed. As author <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Done-Sign-My-Name/dp/1400083117/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232339348&sr=8-1">Tim Tyson</a> has bluntly put it: "In the years since his murder, we have transformed King...
Heaven and Earth by Debra Dean Murphy (1/13/2009)
...ood come from there?”) is the eternal Logos, Word made flesh, whose glory we have beheld. It is the calling of the disciples that preoccupies the fourth evangelist here. (The Lectionary for Mass focuses on Peter and Andrew; the RCL treats the call of Philip and Nathanael). In Jesus’ conversation with Nathanael it becomes clear where the gospel...
Amahl and the Night Visitors by Debra Dean Murphy (1/5/2009)
...an opera for live broadcast on the fledgling, new medium of television. On Christmas Eve of the following year, Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered on NBC. Menotti grew up with the European tradition of the Three Kings bringing gifts to children on Epiphany. Various stories and legends, many of them humorous, came to be associated with the ...
Hope by Debra Dean Murphy (1/2/2009)
...iving as we did in rural West Virginia, none of us in that class of fourth graders came from wealthy families. Most of us came from similar economic backgrounds. We were all of modest means—some a little better off than others, maybe, but not markedly so. But even in places like Appalachia, and especially in places like elementary, middle, and high schools, there are fixed systems of order and ...
Camel Hair and the Christ Child by Debra Dean Murphy (12/8/2008)
...rring: sweet-faced children singing about cradles and crèches on the same Sunday that we hear about leather belts, locusts and wild honey. It’s early December and we’re already at the manger (the tidy Christmas card version)—in our heads and in our worship. We come to church decked out in our holiday finest and John the Baptizer greets us, sporting animal-skin outerwear and going on and on about b...
Cynical/Dreams by Debra Dean Murphy (11/6/2008)
... Nov. 4. Even though it wasn’t a surprise, the election of Barack Obama is epic for all the reasons the pundits have waxed eloquent about during the last twenty-four hours, and the margin of his victory is ample evidence that Senator McCain didn’t lose the election: Senator Obama won it, and decisively. It is moving to see the <a href="http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/peop...
Wisdom and Folly by Debra Dean Murphy (11/4/2008)
...</a>1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13 (32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time) At first glance the gospel lesson this week seems to encourage the kind of smug dualism that has characterized this long electoral season. (Can it really be coming to an end this week?): Some people are wise and some are foolish and thank God I’m among the wise ones. Such readings (of political campaigns, of...
No Small Change by Debra Dean Murphy (10/14/2008)
...llars in retirement accounts like 401(k)s. It's no small matter that many people close to retirement may be in quite a fix. And it seems reasonable to ask, if such a vast sum is indeed lost, can't someone figure out how and where we might find it? Where the heck did all that money go? But of course it wasn't real money that went missing—it was an abstract numerical projection derived...
Raging and Rejoicing by Debra Dean Murphy (10/9/2008)
...liquely, our own. In the Exodus passage, Moses has to talk down an irrational Yehweh, lest divine rage obliterate the wayward Israelites. In Matthew's parable of the wedding banquet, an equally unreasonable host-king (God) responds in wildly disproportionate ways to what amounts to a social snubbing and an ill-dressed party guest. Sandwiched between these troubling texts is Psalm 106, which fun...
Law, Economy, Freedom and Community by Debra Dean Murphy (9/30/2008)
...ht="200" /></a>Exodus 20:1-20 There's a running gag on Comedy Central's Colbert Report in which the fake-bluster, windbag host, Stephen Colbert, interviews members of Congress in a segment called "Better Know a District." In <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/180282/september-05-2008/better-know-a-district---lynn-westmoreland-update">a recent installment</a...
God’s Economy by Debra Dean Murphy (9/24/2008)
...y our days and overtake all our social interactions. In fact, if you want to break the ice with a new acquaintance or fill that awkward silence with a stranger in a waiting room, on the bus, wherever—just bring up the near-collapse of the world’s financial markets. You’ll get a knowing gaze, a sympathetic nod. It is telling that the current crisis on Wall Street has captivated our attention lik...
Workers’ Rights and the Kingdom of Heaven by Debra Dean Murphy (9/18/2008)
... the first will be last.” Matthew 20:15-16 Some say that human beings are hardwired with a strong sense of what’s fair and what’s not. Maybe. But even if it’s not part of our DNA, it seems pretty clear that the resentment we feel when treated unjustly is learned early and runs deep. Ever been in a room full of toddlers when there aren’t enough toys to go around? We don’t seem to lose th...
70 x 7 and 9/11 by Debra Dean Murphy (9/12/2008)
...nt-style: italic;">Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22) At a time like this—the week we recall the attacks of September 11, 2001—it is instructive to set the script of American civil piety ne...
Love and Power by Debra Dean Murphy (9/5/2008)
...n’t seem to help myself. Two weeks of convention hoopla—spin and jive, sentiment and spectacle, smugness and sarcasm—have left me more hopeless than ever about the state of political discourse in the United States of America. Where’s the maturity and civility and humility? Where’s the courage to cast our political, economic, and moral challenges in the nuanced ways they require? Why are we afra...
Immigration and the Hebrew Midwives by Debra Dean Murphy (8/23/2008)
... absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." - Thomas Paine, 1776 “But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.”- Exodus 1:17 In a class I used to teach called “Women and the Bible” my students and I would examine the Exodus story of the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and P...
Immigration and the Crumbs from Our Table by Debra Dean Murphy (8/18/2008)
...ist I have, made up mostly of fellow church members but also including some far-flung friends and colleagues. Often, I share my bLOGOS reflections on the lectionary or make a plea for help with a project or program; sometimes I simply direct folks to an interesting website or blog. The point is not to court controversy for its own sake, but sometimes the topics and the ensuing conversation take us...
Rocking the Boat by Debra Dean Murphy (8/8/2008)
...stile to religion generally and Christianity particularly, and a pious defender of the faith. In my view, neither has been very impressive in articulating his case against the other, and the back-and-forth accusations and “gotcha’s” and outright vitriol have only escalated as the debate has gone on (and on and on). I tried briefly to weigh in on it earlier this week, calling for a little charity ...
Tasting Death, Tasting Life by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...ousand is a description of a very different sort of meal: John the Baptizer’s head on a platter. And just as women and children are included among the crowds fed on the beach with bread and fish (a detail unique to Matthew’s version of the story), the female sex is also represented in the account of John’s demise. Herodias, sister-in-law of Herod, asks for the head of the Baptist; her nameless da...
Shrubs and Kingdoms by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
..."font-style: italic;">“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” -- Matthew 13:31-33 It has often been pointed out that when Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a shrub,...
Gathering Gifts by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
... worship, learning, and fellowship. I traveled to Chicago this year with three good friends from my church—new endorsers of EP and first-time Gathering attendees. These friends—Judy, Chris, and Greg—were overwhelmed by all they encountered (in the best possible sense of that word) and we continue to talk about what we experienced, hoping that our own transformed thinking about matters of race ...
The Binding of Isaac: Gen. 22: 1-14 by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...y Father, / Behold the preparations, fire and iron, / But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering? / Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, / And builded parapets and trenches there, / And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. / When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven, / Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, / Neither do anything to him, thy son. / Behol...
The Making of Many Books by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...reotype: women who gather to discuss the latest Oprah pick and drink lots of wine. We do drink wine and share a meal together every time we meet, but no Oprah books for us. And there are men in our group, too. And our members range in age from their early 30s to their late 60s. (One woman in an assisted-living community is a “virtual” member, keeping up with the club through our email discussions;...
Third Sunday After Pentecost by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...s shaking; the sea roaring and foaming; swollen waters on the earth; rain, flood, wind, destruction, death? Those of us who have never experienced the kind of catastrophic devastation associated with cyclones and earthquakes can too easily romanticize the natural world, admiring only its beauty: a breathtaking sunset, a beautiful beach, a majestic mountain. As modern suburbanites and urbanites ...
Strangers and Other Gifts by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...as a degree program in most colleges and universities. For many people, hospitality is exercised primarily as a form of social entertaining: magazines like Southern Living set impossible standards for home décor, flower arranging, menu planning, and so on. The people we invited into our well-scrubbed homes to sit at our perfectly-set tables and eat our carefully-prepared dinners (meant to impre...
Trinity Sunday by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...y analogies: The Trinity is like a three-leaf clover. The Trinity is like the three phases of water—liquid, solid, steam. No wonder people in the pews often rebel against doctrinal sermons. But the problem, of course, is not with doctrine. The problem is that many Christians consider doctrine (whether we’re talking about the Trinity or salvation or the nature of the Church) as som...
Beautiful Day by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...hing green and lush. The azaleas are past their prime but the camellias are in top form. It’s a beautiful day. It’s also the day that voters go to the polls to decide local, state, and national primary contests. Holding our primary as we do in the month of May, we’re not used to mattering much on the national scene. Party nominees are usually firmed up long before now. But you know that your st...
Benedict and Jeremiah by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
... his stateside visit earlier this month, spoke the truth about American Catholicism with equal parts commendation and critique. His humility and shy grace were evident in his speeches and sermons and in his carriage and demeanor (all of which was a little disconcerting to those who remember when his public persona—fair or not—was that of the rigid, humorless Cardinal Ratzinger). Jeremiah Wright...
Prayer Pet Peeves by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
..., in low-church Methodism in the South, I’m called upon regularly, in a variety of contexts, to offer extemporaneous prayers. I also frequently hear others—both clergy and laity— pray “on the fly.” Extemporaneous prayers can be as varied in substance and style as those who offer them, but I have to say that the longer I am in this setting where extemporaneous prayers are valued as “authentic” a...
Suffering and Abundance by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:4). Any time sheep are mentioned in the Bible people sometimes go a little soft in the head, inflicting a nursery-rhyme cuteness on stories and images that often have a political, subversive edge. This Sunday’s passage from John’s gospel should give us pause if we are tempted toward such silliness. The text is...
The Road to Exile by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...m 1 Peter will take center stage in many sermons this Sunday, but in thinking through all of the day’s appointed readings—their particular concerns and their possible associations, it’s not a bad place to begin. For one thing, we read portions of 1 Peter for several consecutive Sundays during Easter of Year A in the common lectionary, passages which constitute something of an Easter catechesis for...
Do You Believe in the Resurrection? by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
... on that first Easter morning and in the days and weeks that followed. But doubt and struggle were not obstacles to faith; they were its necessary precondition. Throughout history and into our own time there have been persons on a mission to “prove” the resurrection as historical fact, and there have been others intent on disproving it. Last spring, CNN aired a special program called “What Is A...
The Violence of Love by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...Romero, murdered while celebrating the Eucharist at the chapel of Divine Providence Cancer Hospital in San Salvador on March 24, 1980. We should not wonder that a church has a lot of cross to bear. Otherwise, it will not have a lot of resurrection. An accommodating church, a church that seeks prestige without the pain of the cross, is not the authentic church of Jesus Christ. (February 19, 1978...
The Face of Race by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...>At the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; ...
Come and See by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...r, it seems, is that she had five husbands. But what are the particular circumstances? Deaths? Divorces? Promiscuity? We do not know. All we know is that Jesus, as is his custom in his encounters in John’s gospel, reveals intimate knowledge of this woman. He does not urge her to repent or change her behavior; he renders no judgment, offers no rebuke. Bu...
Mardi Gras by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...ities, New Orleans (at least until Katrina and its aftermath changed the city and our perception of it forever), “Fat Tuesday” seems the antithesis of anything holy or sacred. But its origins, of course, are in the Church’s season of Lent. Ash Wednesday is preceded by Fat Tuesday ("Mardi Gras" in French) which, historically, was a time to eat up all th...
Looking Toward Lent by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
...ha It is not uncommon in a lot of churches, perhaps rural ones especially, for a particular family to be a dominant force in the life of the congregation. The family may be founding members of the church, pillars in the community. They may have donated a prominent stained glass window or paid for the pulpit or altar—maybe even bankrolled the fellowship hall. While there is us...
Eating Locally by Debra Dean Murphy (5/1/2008)
...ng such a promiscuous eater, but Kingsolver is too good a writer for that. She simply chronicles her family’s triumphs and failures; their joys and frustrations. As she puts it, this is the story of what they learned, or didn’t; what they ate, or couldn’t; and how the family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the same place where they worked, loved their neighbors, dra...