By Ragan Sutterfield

• Given Lives in a Given World by Ragan Sutterfield (2/14/2017)
  ...would be more comprehensive, but Jackson rejected that measure as still too small.  Frustrated, Berry asked Jackson what economy would be large enough.  Jackson replied, “the Kingdom of God.” As we work through the Sermon on the Mount we find Jesus in the role of the new Moses, on the new Sinai, teaching God’s people the renewed Law.  The instructions offered are how these people gathered as Je...
• Prayer in the Zone by Ragan Sutterfield (10/12/2016)
  ...ed by an alien force and it has become dangerous to anyone who moves through it without care--the landscape always shifting, the wreckage of civilization overgrown by the wild. Stalkers are the people who are able to travel through the Zone, they know the way to the room. In the film two men, named simply “Writer” and “Professor,” hire a character named, keeping to the theme, “Stalker,” to take th...
• What Are You Preparing For? by Ragan Sutterfield (8/3/2016)
  ...he sea level. As Elizabeth Kolbert <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami">chronicled last fall in the <em>New Yorker</em></a>, when a super tide comes crashing in it floods the the lawns of million dollar homes and soaks sports cars in corrosive salt water. This is happening more and more. It will keep happening more and more. The city of Miami Beach is, of co...
• What We Owe by Ragan Sutterfield (6/9/2016)
  ...earsed and repeated, were the same every time. I’d lead them through a series of exercises and thought experiments that would help most, in the end, see their advantages—the head start, however hard the work, they had over many others from different backgrounds and races than their own. But I’d always leave a little sad, because since this was a Christian school it should have been one saturate...
• Danger: Holy Ground by Ragan Sutterfield (2/25/2016)
  ...ten it. There are cars, there are electrical sockets, there are long flights of stairs; there are hard things and sharp corners, there are choking hazards everywhere. The world is full of dangers and part of the process of growing up is learning the habits to avoid them. “Don’t put that in your mouth.” “Don’t put your finger in that socket.” “Look both ways before you cross the street.” “Watch ...
• Tilling and Keeping: A Report on Gathering 2014 by Ragan Sutterfield (8/18/2014)
  ...nary speakers guided our conversations at the gathering.  First was Norman Wirzba, who renewed our understanding of the very good creation and called us away from the language of “nature” that obscures our view of a world to which God has already given value.  Second, was Ched Myers who called us to learn our watersheds and place our discipleship within our local ecosystems. Third, we heard from P...
• Hating the Godfather by Ragan Sutterfield (6/19/2014)
  ...heir own, an import of Sicilian semi-feudalism where powerful families are essentially rulers of small fiefdoms—thus the idea of the godfather. Michael wants to live a more Americanized life with an American girl.  He wants to be a part of a different kind of social order than the one in which he was raised.  And yet the whole drama of the film is the dissolution of this ideal.  Michael is draw...
• The Walking Dead and Waking Saints by Ragan Sutterfield (4/10/2014)
  ...  What I barely remembered though was this verse: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (27:52-53; NRSV). In a pop culture that is obsessed with zombies it is hard not to imagine this scene as a clip from “The Walking Dead.”  I can see the str...
• Groaning and Flourishing: Gathered by Our Creator's Care by Ragan Sutterfield (2/5/2014)
  ...damage done is beyond calculation and it will take years to know the full effects. These examples are just to name some of the ways in which creation is groaning in pain and eager longing for God's Kingdom to arrive <!--more-->against the empires of death and greed. The church is called to so much more than green teams and bulletin recycling. We are called to seek the flourishing of creation as we...
• The Risks of Baby Dedication by Ragan Sutterfield (1/29/2014)
  ...ny.”  Then this man says that you will find your own soul “pierced by a sword.”  A little blue or pink New Testament would hardly seem an appropriate gift after all of that. Jesus was certainly no normal child and that was marked by the extraordinary way in which he entered the religious life of his people.  Simeon and Anna saw in Jesus someone who came to save the world but also to disturb it....
• What Are You Waiting For? by Ragan Sutterfield (12/11/2013)
  ...h John in prison, a place made for the worst kind of waiting.  He wants to know from Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  This is critical for John because he is about to die and he knows it.  Should he die still praying for the Kingdom for which he has been preparing? Or can he uncork the bootlegged Champaign in celebration of its arrival?<!--more--> From ou...
• Recreating Eaarth by Ragan Sutterfield (10/16/2013)
  ......was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone.” Christ, being God’s Word present and active in creation from the beginning, had to come in human form so that he could re-create the world and show humankind how to be human in the face of the “dehumanizing of mankind.” I thought of Athanasius, of the mixing of creation and salvation, when I read Jeremiah 31:27-34 in our lectionary for...
• The Church in the Wild by Ragan Sutterfield (8/15/2013)
  ...and successional trees, and cats would take over (dogs it turns out have tied their fate to ours).</p> <p dir="ltr">I like to entertain such ideas--of a city overgrown with weeds, of the industrial countryside reforested--not because I am a misanthrope but because I like the idea of a reset.  The way we’re living on this earth isn’t sustainable, much less flourishing and it would be good to start...
• Stay Close by Ragan Sutterfield (6/26/2013)
  ...; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." "Stay close" disrupts our stable world of fixed religion, it requires us to stick less to this or that place whether it is a physical place or a place of practice or ideas. "Stay close" could mean sticking to here, whether it is a corrupt institution or a difficult neighborhood or with people who just don't get us. "Stay close" could mean getti...
• Loving Those People by Ragan Sutterfield (4/25/2013)
  ... is bound to be the common sport.  The Baptist are the dominant denomination in the region, often conservative brands.  Many in the Episcopal Church grew up in Baptist churches or similar denominations and they consider their new status as Episcopalians to be an enlightened escape.  So they take cheap shots, ridicule the Baptists and feel self-satisfied.</p> <p dir="ltr">The flipside occurs of co...
• Uncover Your Face by Ragan Sutterfield (2/7/2013)
  ...eil” was inspired by one of Moody’s ancestors, a guilt ridden puritan minister.  To understand the power of the black veil Moody wears one, and then riffs for pages on the power of the veil and its color. <!--more--> He closes the book: <em>Red, white, and blue is just marketing rhetoric</em>, therefore, the sloganeering to which we aspire in order not to terrify foreign nationals; <em>the r...
• Preparing for Disaster by Ragan Sutterfield (11/28/2012)
  ...ough, and then there seems to always be the guy who didn’t see it coming.  The “I was just going to wait it out” kind of guy.  You have to wonder about those people—every siren is going off, the new channels shriller than ever, big winds sweeping through and yet they decide to just sit there until the flood waters come in and they swim through their front door.  They just can’t believe that the wa...
• A Hard, Simple Truth by Ragan Sutterfield (9/19/2012)
  ...it can be an incredible experience of seeing new places, embracing the beauty of creation, and catching up with old friends.  On the other it can be a painful disruption of sacred routines, full of stress filled hours finding ones way in unknown places with a crying baby and hours of hellish interstate.  I alternate back and forth, but lately I’ve been on the grumpy side, missing the hard fought r...
• The Banquets of Two Kingdoms by Ragan Sutterfield (7/11/2012)
  ...<!--more--> Just before our gospel reading this Sunday (RCL) we witness Jesus sending his disciples out to proclaim this Kingdom of Life, completely without any supplies or tools of coercion.  The only thing they have is Good News.  “So they went out,” we are told, “and proclaimed that all should repent.” Repentance is always a turning from and a turning to, and so to give us some understand...
• Believe It or Not by Ragan Sutterfield (5/3/2012)
  ...il, etc.  For a time she continued in her role as a minister—albeit a faithless one.  The cognitive dissonance eventually led her to “come out” as an atheist at convention of non-believers.  The video of her coming out went viral on the internet and soon enough her congregation found out, in the way of many an internet age breakup, through social media.  <!--more-->Many shunned her, job interviews...
• Plastic Minds and Magic Eyes by Ragan Sutterfield (2/14/2012)
  ...in red and white stripes.  “Where’s Waldo”, “Magic Eye”--we love seeing games where we must pick out an image from visual confusion.  Perhaps this love comes from our history as hunters and gathers, when we had to unmask the camouflage of animals in order to gain our daily food.  Whatever it is, we love seeing what was invisible made suddenly apparent. The ability to see beyond the obvious is a...
• The Church as Highway Department by Ragan Sutterfield (12/6/2011)
  ...s are able to track changes in the landscape that might indicate a mass grave or the razing of a village.  The satellite images also offer a chance, in some cases, of heading off attacks because preceding a major advance the Janjaweed militias will have to clear trees and build roads to allow their forces to move heavy artillery.  In another recent NPR story about the history of the American inter...
• Let Others Decide by Ragan Sutterfield (9/28/2011)
  ...icular demands of this drought season, to carry out the disciplines necessary to be a gardener. I was glad to claim the title “gardener” and not suffer the heat, time and sweat that would really make me one. Because of this experience, I can understand some of what the Pharisees must have felt as they heard Jesus' parable—they were God's people, the rightful inhabitants of the promise-land, t...
• Life Among the Weeds by Ragan Sutterfield (7/13/2011)
  ...ve understood something important about the wheat that came out of a field of weeds—it was strong and sure, tested by the weeds and able to grow in spite of them.  The seeds of that wheat will carry that strength too—it is this seed that a farmer would want to plant next year, not the untested wheat that can’t stand up to the pressures that will inevitably come.  The question is one of endurance—o...
• Why Do You Weep? by Ragan Sutterfield (4/22/2011)
  ...their hopes for a new reality gone.   But Mary remained with the question—she stayed with the empty tomb, the trace of the Lord she still loved, the death she didn’t claim to understand.  It is by staying that she is present for the questioning of her perception—“Woman, why do you weep?”<!--more--> It is a question that means everything—it is a question that indicates an event that’s about to h...
• Reality Hunger by Ragan Sutterfield (2/10/2011)
  ...a> Reality hunger.  I read a book by that title last summer and the title, more than the book, describes what many of us are feeling these days.  We long for the concrete, the real, the hard surfaced world against all of the abstractions of the Economy, of the powers and institutions that seem to dictate our lives without our understanding the what and who and why of their existence.  And yet, ...
• God Made Visible by Ragan Sutterfield (12/31/2010)
  ...is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”  This comes after we are told of the light coming into the world, a light that makes God visible by dwelling with us and making us children of the light with “grace upon grace.” <!--more--> In Matthew 2:1-12 we read about the wise men from the East who are guided by a star, a sign that leads them to the light of th...
• Proper 21: Not Enough For Everyone’s Greed by Ragan Sutterfield (9/23/2010)
  ...remus.org/?ql=152213924">1 Tim 6:11-16</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=152213951">Lk 16:19-31</a> When I read passages like those in this week’s lectionary I find myself saying, not unlike the Pharisee in Luke 18, “God, I am thankful I’m not wealthy.” Of course, not withstanding the fact that I am quite comfortable and generally don’t go wanting for what I need, these scripture passa...
• Ask And It Will Be Given by Ragan Sutterfield (7/22/2010)
  ...5</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=146768382">Luke 11:1-13</a> I heard a lecture by the philosopher Dallas Willard once in which he said that he believes that God wants to fulfill all of our desires and give us everything we want.  Of course, he said, there must be much work of transformation on the wanter before this can happen.  I am reminded of this as I read the Gospel for this wee...
• Trinity Sunday by Ragan Sutterfield (5/28/2010)
  ...ans 5:1-5</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=142016340">John 16:12-15</a> I must admit, I am not very comfortable with spirits. God the Father, God the Son—these are concrete realities that show up on mountaintops, write on stone tablets, and die on wooden crosses. But the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Wisdom? I have a hard time understanding. Thankfully I don’t hav...
• Insurrection Sunday by Ragan Sutterfield (3/26/2010)
  ...74333">Psalm 31:9-16</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=136574358">Luke 22:14-23:56</a> “For I hear the whispering of many— terror all around!— as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.” These verses from Psalm 31 are a proper preface to Palm Sunday. This is the Sunday not so much of children waving palms with hosannas as it is the beginning of a drama that...
• The Joy of Not Being in Charge by Ragan Sutterfield (1/12/2010)
  ...st, tranquility, serenity, and peace of God.” Wirzba writes that God’s rest “when understood within a menuha context, is not simply a cessation from activity but rather the lifting up and celebration of everything. Here we see God…like a parent frolicking with a child and in his joy and play demonstrating and abiding commitment to protect, sustain, encourage, and love into health and maturity the...
• Spring Will Come Before We Know It by Ragan Sutterfield (11/25/2009)
  ...ees are dormant, reserving their sugars to live out a time when the sun won’t be around enough to power their life. The trees are moving to their reserve supplies; they are waiting until the spring. But at some point, when the conditions of rain and sun and a myriad of other factors come together, there will be a moment, one moment, when the trees will shoot forth leaves again. This will happen...
• Coming Home with Shouts of Joy by Ragan Sutterfield (10/22/2009)
  ....oremus.org/?ql=123217849">Hebrews 7:23-28</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=123217874">Mark 10:46-52</a> “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51). It’s a striking question Jesus asks Bartimaeus—a beggar sitting beside the road when Jesus passes by; a blind man whose pleas of “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” could not be suppressed. What kind of answer was Jesus expec...
• Preparing for the Gift by Ragan Sutterfield (8/26/2009)
  ...8312595">Psalm 15</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=118312625">James 1:17-27</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=118312653">Mark 7:1-8</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=118312692">14-15</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=118312721">21-23</a> A good farmer is one who knows what he can do and what he can’t. He can work the soil, build compost, mulch, but the growth of...