Posts from 2008

• Eating Locally by Debra Dean Murphy (5/1/2008)
  I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, a captivating story of her family’s efforts to eat locally for an entire year. From one spring to the next, everything they consumed was either grown in their own modest garden or purchased from farmers’ markets or dairies or butchers in their rural county in southwest Virginia (though they did make a few exceptions for staples like olive oil, spices, and fair trade organic coffee). This is the kind of book that could get all preachy and high-minded, making the reader feel bad for being 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 w...
• On Ontology and Organizations Voluntary by Tobias Winright (5/1/2008)
  In his column, which is published in many Catholic diocesan newspapers around the U.S., this week, George Weigel, who is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., criticizes Catholic candidates who are running for the presidency when they appear to bracket their Christianity "when they put on their hats as public servants." Specifically, Weigel writes, "when a candidate for public office avers that 'membership in the faith community' is deeply personal or a matter of 'my relationship with Jesus' then suggests that being a Catholic Christian is a compartment of life that can be hermetically sealed off from first principles of justice (abortion, euthanasia, and embryo-destructive stem-cell research), we're dealing with a confused camper. One might even sa...
• When Eight Days Were Fulfilled by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  "When eight days were fulfilled for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb." Luke 2:21 Back in grade school, I flipped through a highly modernized version of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and came across this definition of “Sunday”: “In Christian countries, the day of the football game.” While I imagine my sons and I will take in a few downs together some time today, observing Christmas season its full duration is a virtue, brimming with goods “internal to the practice.” In addition to serving as a day to sleep in late, and watch parades and college football televised from warmer climates, January 1 has variously...
• Telephones and What is Good for Us by Randy Cooper (8/1/2008)
  David Kline is an Amish man. He insists that Amish people are not understood. Amish people are maligned for being against all forms of modern technology. That is not true, he says. Rather, the Amish use only those technologies that, in their best judgment, do not harm their community life. For example, lanterns are not allowed on their farm field equipment. With lanterns they would be tempted to work into the night hours. And working in the fields past sunset would weaken their family life and would overwork their horses. Several years ago the question came up about whether David Kline’s community would use telephones. Everyone in the church—the community—met and discussed it a number of times. It took all summer for them to decide whether they would h...
• Looking Toward Lent by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  When we take too much pride in “family churches,” where neat, nuclear families dominate, we risk forgetting what Jesus did on Good Friday. “Family churches,” for all their honoring of family life, may limit the much wider embrace of God’s grace. Some priorities valued in family churches can be hostile to individuals who do not fit middle-class paradigms. They can exclude people Jesus would want us to welcome. The world consists of many persons who have had to take different and often painful roads. The true community Jesus seeks makes space for them all. — Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha 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...
• Fools For Christ by Randy Cooper (8/1/2008)
  I’m thinking this morning of Van Thompson. There he is down in Memphis, newly married. To the surprise of some, Van and Kristin have chosen to live in the Binghamton neighborhood, a community riddled with urban poverty and crime. They are two of many Christians moving into the community in recent years in order to bear witness and to offer their bodily presence. For these Christians, mission and evangelism are not separate from daily living, but are rather a way of life. Mission and evangelism have to do with daily habits and practices that place them beside persons whose walk in life is different from theirs. By placing themselves in such a community, they are availing themselves of God’s Holy Spirit to love the neighbors given to them by God. Only God kno...
• Better Than Borders and Barriers by Brent Laytham (8/1/2008)
  Two days into Black History month, on the eve of the Transfiguration, it might be well for us to remember one key theme of Epiphany: Jesus gathers around himself a community of former strangers now become friends, a circle of former enemies now knit together as one family, a body where difference enlivens and diversity enriches. At the Society of Christian Ethics last month I attended a panel discussion that focused on the racial segregation of Christian worship in the US. Meeting in Atlanta, we took up Martin Luther King’s observation that 11 o’clock on Sunday was and still is the most segregated hour in America. One of the most challenging questions was posed by Bryan Massingale, who asked us when in the last three years we had heard a sermon that condemned racial div...
• Mardi Gras by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]Mardi Gras. The phrase conjures images of drunken revelry and riotous carnality, tempered with a little voodoo carnivàle. Associated as it is with that most sensual of American cities, 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. Lent is Scary; It Hurts Like Hell by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)

  [image]The Catholic lectionary readings for the Second Sunday of Lent include the Transfiguration account, a reading many Protestant traditions heard two weeks earlier. In any case, I have nothing to add to the vast libraries of commentary devoted to that gospel episode. It’s 2 Timothy that I have on my mind this Lenten week (Those of you hearing Romans 4 also have something meaty to dwell on. It’s...
• Unexpected News by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  This past Sunday brought NCAA basketball just down the street from my parish on the campus of Xavier University in Cincinnati. We’d been warned parking would be a nightmare for the 11 o’clock mass, so we went instead to St. Joseph’s church, a largely African-American Catholic church in Cincinnati’s struggling West End. My family had worshipped there before – usually at the end of one of our parish’s “urban plunge” weekends – and knew we were in for a powerful experience. But what struck me more than the heartfelt singing and unselfconscious prayer was the force of scripture proclaimed by mouths familiar with the bitter taste of injustice. I would have heard the same text well-read in my own parish of overeducated, socially progressive white f...
• Come and See by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  Third Sunday in Lent - John 4:5-42 Interpreters of this lengthy passage are usually quick to point out the “three strikes” against the woman at the well: her gender, her ethnicity, and her dubious marital status. And despite the fact that she engages Jesus in the longest conversation he has with anyone in the gospels, friend or foe; that she can hold her own in a theological debate; that she is the first person Jesus reveals himself to in John’s gospel; that she is the first evangelist and her testimony brings many to faith; despite all of this—what the Samaritan woman is most remembered for, 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 J...
• Coming To Our Senses by Erin Martin (8/1/2008)
  [image]This year our Lenten journey through the wilderness is not one that we walk alone. The persons who come face to face with Jesus in the Gospel of John on the Sundays in Lent are our traveling companions. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Mary, Martha, even Lazarus, all have a place on our journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. From ...
• What Do You See? by Jessie Larkins (8/1/2008)
  [image] “Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” -- John 9:40-41 When I was in seminary...
• The Risen Lazarus is No Stranger by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]The eleventh chapter of John’s gospel brims with riches, providing the biblical verse nearly everyone remembers, “Jesus wept,” as well as the clearest possible statement of the functional principle underlying every City of Man, “It is better for one man to die than for the people ...
• Nice Guys and Crucifixion by Joel Shuman (8/1/2008)
  [image] Even if we have somehow managed to remain blissfully ignorant of where our Lenten journey has been taking us, or with whom we are traveling, the traditional Gospel text for Palm Sunday—and indeed, all of Matthew’s Gospel from Chapter 21 on—serves ...
• The Face of Race by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]

  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 Chri...

• The Violence of Love by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]Easter Monday marked the anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar 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....
• Do You Believe in the Resurrection? by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]There were doubt and struggle 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 ...
• The Road to Exile by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]It isn’t likely that the text from 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 plac...
• Obama and His Preacher by Randy Cooper (8/1/2008)
  Barack Obama has endured criticism for his membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and for his association with his now-retired pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Jr. Wright’s inflammatory remarks have met with angry disapproval. Yet this reflection is not about Rev. Wright. I am writing, instead, about Obama and his understanding of the Church. Political pundits have said that Obama should publicly refute his pastor. They have written that if Obama had any integrity, he would withdraw his membership from his Trinity church. These people are merely revealing that Obama’s understanding of the gospel is far more mature than theirs. Indeed, these “experts” cannot fathom the integrity that Obama has shown. Thus far at least, Obama’s actions and words witness to an understanding of ...
• Suffering and Abundance by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]“When he has brought out all his own, 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 nurse...
• Jesus, Gates, and Sheep by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]In preparation for this year’s Triduum, the three solemn days leading into Easter, those in my parish chosen to proclaim scripture were expected to attend at least one group practice session. In that sense, at least, my parish...
• Prayer Pet Peeves by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]Working, as I do, 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.” ...
• How Can We Know the Way? by Erin Martin (8/1/2008)
  [image] It’s become our routine. No sooner have I strapped my two year-old son, Elijah, into his car seat and started driving us on our way than my son pipes up from the back seat, “Hey mom, where are we going?” I alway...
• Benedict and Jeremiah by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]Two very public, very controversial religious leaders have addressed the nation in as many weeks and the differences between them couldn’t be more striking. Pope Benedict, during 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 ...
• Should I Stay or Should I Go? by Jessie Larkins (8/1/2008)
  [image]When I read the Ascension texts for today (or this upcoming Sunday if you are in a Protestant tradition that celebrates the Ascension on the following Sunday), my tendency is to immediately jump to the conclusion of Luke’s report in Acts 1 when the angels appear to ask the disciples: “Why do you stand looking up at heaven?” I hear in this question an affirmation of my own ne...
• Beautiful Day by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]Today is a beautiful spring day in central North Carolina. The summer heat and humidity that will oppress us for weeks on end is not yet upon us. Recent rains have made everything 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 pri...
• The Full Gospel Anthem by Jim McCoy (8/1/2008)

  In Jesus Christ we have faith in the incarnate, crucified and risen God. In the incarnation we learn of the love of God for His creation; in the crucifixion we learn of the judgment of God upon all flesh; and in the resurrection we learn of God’s will for a new world. There could be no greater error than to tear these elements apart; for each of them comprises the whole. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

  That early evening in Dillsboro was the kind that makes Smokey Mountain summer dusks famous. It was 1974 and I was singing with a resort ministry group. We had just finished an unforgettable feast of trout and country ham at the Jarrett House. Now the little church across the street was pleasantly filled to hear us. The e...
• Trinity Sunday by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]This Sunday is Trinity Sunday on the Christian calendar, the only feast day in the liturgical year devoted to a doctrine of the Church. Many on this day will be tempted to dust off the clumsy 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.by Kyle Childress (8/1/2008)

  Many of us remember the experience of having someone, usually a parent or grandparent, tell us when we were young, “You know, when I was your age I had to walk to school and it was uphill both ways.” That old saying has been echoing in my head a lot lately. At least since I’ve been walking from my house to the church occasionally and then back again. When I used to drive the same route I knew it was uphill both directions but not in the same way I now know. To be more specific, it is more uphill going than it is coming back and the tilt to one side is hard on the ankles. Noticing things, paying attention to details is a recurring wonder to me the more walking I do. My preferred walk is the Tucker House trails behind the SFA Native Plant Center. There’s no traffic, not many pe...
• Habeas Corpus by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]In the Common Lectionary for Protestant churches, tomorrow is the second Sunday after Pentecost. In Roman Catholic churches, however, it’s Corpus Christi: not a city in Texas, but the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. From Thursday until Sunday, more traditional Catholic churches will hold processions, and countless homilies wil...
• Strangers and Other Gifts by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]“Hospitality” is an overused word in our culture. We speak of the hospitality “industry,” a 3.5 trillion dollar service sector of the global economy. “Hospitality management” is now offered 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 ...
• Third Sunday After Pentecost by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]What does it mean, I wonder, to hear this week’s appointed scripture texts if you are a Christian in Myanmar or in the Sichuan province of China? What would you make of all this talk of mountains 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 wi...
• The Making of Many Books by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]I oversee a book club in the church where I work. We haven’t come up with a name more descriptive or imaginative than “book club,” so many people assume we’re a lot like the stereotype: 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 gr...
• Gospel Nonviolence, Untranslated by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]I won’t weigh in on the latest election year “religion and politics” silliness involving Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the Obama campaign except to note that Mr. Obama, who could easily have been much harder on Mr. Dobson, has said what any respectable candidate for the office of Commander i...
• The Binding of Isaac: Gen. 22: 1-14 by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, / And took the fire with him, and a knife. / And as they sojourned both of them together, / Isaac the first-born spake and said, My 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 ...
• Behold, How Good and Pleasant by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]If you mourn the splintering of Christianity, if you pray that all may be one as Christ and the Father are one, and especially if you, in whatever Christian tradition you worship, yearn for a strong ecumenism in which Christians speak from the heart as the Holy Spirit guides them, refusing to merely paper over substantive differences, then there’s something you must hear. Fr. Joh...
• Fasting Against a Divided Body by Brent Laytham (8/1/2008)
  [image]One of the great joys of our EP Gatherings is eating together. We break bread with friends old and new, discovering at a common table our common life in Christ. That makes it all the more painful that many of us who endorse The Ekklesia Project cannot come together as one body at the Eucharistic table of our Lord. Several years ago, we spent an entire Gathering exploring that pain.by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)

  [image]It’s been more than a week since the Gathering ended and my head is still swimming and my heart is still full. There is always so much to take in when we meet each summer for conversation, 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 Gr...
• Imagining the Road We Share by Brian Volck (8/1/2008)
  [image]A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. -- Isaiah 40:3 (NIV) “I’ve been to conferences on race and racism before, but this is different,” I was told several times at this summer’s Ekklesia Project gathering in Chicago. I agree. There was far less nonsens...
• Shrubs and Kingdoms by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image]“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 an...
• The Metaphysics of Discipleship by Halden Doerge (8/1/2008)
  [image]Perhaps the recurring issue in discussions of Christian discipleship regards simply whether or not it is something that Christians should think they can actually do. Not long into the established church's history the notion became prominent that the ethics of Jesus, particularly as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) and other prominent texts in the gospels (cf. Luke 6:17-46; 14...
• Tasting Death, Tasting Life by Debra Dean Murphy (8/1/2008)
  [image](Matthew 14:13-21) Immediately before the story of the feeding of the five thousand 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 d...
• Getting Small by Kyle Childress (8/5/2008)
  [image]About the time I was in college, young comedian Steve Martin had a routine called “let’s get small.” Playing on the mid-seventies countercultural “let’s get high” Martin invited everyone to come to his house and “get small.” Martin said that “getting small” was dangerous for children because they would get “really, really small” and it was also impossible for the police to pu...
• The Most Segregated Hour in America by Brian Volck (8/6/2008)
  [image]While longer on sociology than theology or ecclesiology (what can one expect from the news industry?), a recent CNN story on the difficulties inherent in integrating churches resonates with much said at the recent EP gathering....
• Rocking the Boat by Debra Dean Murphy (8/8/2008)
  [image]I’ve been following a blog debate over at www.theolog.org 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 very impressive in articulating his case against the other, and the back-and...
• Ethics After Pentecost by Tobias Winright (8/13/2008)
  [image]According to the Christian liturgical calendar, we are now gathering to worship on Sundays during the Season after Pentecost, which is also often referred to as Ordinary Time even though the Scriptures for Sunday, August 17th (Roman Catholic lectionary) are full of extraordinary, even quite surprising, tidings. Another name for this season is Kingdomtide, and I would like to suggest th...
• Immigration and the Crumbs from Our Table by Debra Dean Murphy (8/18/2008)
  [image]"You speak of signs and wonders / I need something other / I would believe if I was able / But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table. (“Crumbs From Your Table,” U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb) It’s become something of a tradition: I start a conversation via email with a large distribution list 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 proj...
• Immigration and the Hebrew Midwives by Debra Dean Murphy (8/23/2008)
  [image]Exodus 1:8-2:10; Matthew 16:13-20 "For as in 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...
• Useless by Joel Shuman (8/28/2008)
  [image] Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28 A good friend who teaches Theology at a seminary in another part of the country likes occasionally to begin his new classes with the pronouncement that “God is useless.” As you might expect, this assertion is usually not well received by the pious young women and men on the other side of the lectern, who find it ...
• Choosing the Evil of Two Lessers by Brian Volck (9/5/2008)
  [image]Months ago, at the beginning of the presidential rutting season, I reflected here on the comment of a Jewish friend of mine, who said he never felt more alien in the United States than at Christmas. I’m nearly with him on that, seeing how far the consumer capitalist Winter Holiday runs from the appalling mystery of the Incarnation. Yet it’s hard to blame this culture and economy from...
• Love and Power by Debra Dean Murphy (9/5/2008)
  [image]Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20 I’m a political junkie. And like many addicts, I’ve been bingeing lately, and I’m not proud of it. I know better (as most junkies do), but I can’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 ...
• 70 x 7 and 9/11 by Debra Dean Murphy (9/12/2008)
  [image]Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray. (Sirach 28:2) 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, bu...
• Forgiveness and Evangelism by Jessie Larkins (9/17/2008)
  [image]A few years ago, I was a passenger in a car that was in a minor accident in a local shopping center parking lot. Both cars, the one I was in as well as the one that sideswiped us, were traveling at an appropriate parking lot speed of a...
• Workers’ Rights and the Kingdom of Heaven by Debra Dean Murphy (9/18/2008)
  [image]Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16 “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and 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 pre...
• God’s Economy by Debra Dean Murphy (9/24/2008)
  [image]Philippians 2:1-13 There’s nothing like money troubles—ours or someone else’s—to get our attention and hold it. To keep us up at night. To preoccupy 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—...
• Why Share? by Kyle Childress (9/27/2008)
  [image]You may remember the Garrison Keillor story of why shopping at Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery in Lake Wobegon is preferable to shopping in St. Cloud at the new Higgledy-Piggledy. Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery has just gotten in a case of fresh cod. “Frozen, but it’s fresher than what’s been in his freezer for months. In the grocery business, you have to throw out stuff sometimes, but Ralph is Norwegia...
• Law, Economy, Freedom and Community by Debra Dean Murphy (9/30/2008)
  [image]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...
• Raging and Rejoicing by Debra Dean Murphy (10/9/2008)
  [image]Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14 (The 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time) The lessons this week have us thinking about anger: God's and, more obliquely, 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 unreas...
• No Small Change by Debra Dean Murphy (10/14/2008)
  [image]I Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22 (23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time) One of the grim realities of the financial markets meltdown is the loss in trillions of dollars 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 som...
• What God Intends by Randy Cooper (10/21/2008)
  Milton Wright was a Bishop in the Church of the Brethren, traveling throughout his denomination until his death in 1917. He is reported to have said that if God intended human beings to fly, he would have given us wings. We know from history that his sons, Orville and Wilbur, thought otherwise. At times, I find myself thinking this way. I think that if God intended us to have this or that new technology, surely God would have provided it. For example, I care little for cell phones, and only own one jointly with Gayle. If God intended us to talk anywhere, any time, surely we’d have “blue tooth” phones fitted to our ears when we were born. And I find myself thinking this way when it comes to oil and coal. I figure that if God intended us to put carbon into the air, then God surely would n...
• Leadership by Imitation by Jessie Larkins (10/22/2008)
  [image]1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 (24th Sunday after Pentecost) It seems that wherever you turn these days the buzz word on the street is “leadership.” The failure of the financial market, when not being blamed on minorities or the poor, is blamed on a failure of leadership in government and industry. For too long the standard of worth for CEOs and economic strategists has been a cut-throat measure of g...
• Blessed Are They by Erin Martin (10/29/2008)
  Matthew 5:1-12 This year for All Saints’ Sunday, I am hearing differently Jesus’ famous Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. In previous years, I would quickly leap to associating the saints who have gone before us with those whom Jesus calls blessed. My line of thinking would go something like this; it is the witness of the faithful in the history of Christianity and in our lives that demonstrates to us what poverty of spirit and meekness look like. It is the peacemaking “giants” of the past and present who show us what it means to be children of God. As disciples we are simply called to follow their example, to cultivate within us the attitudes these saints so courageously exhibit, and we too shall be called blessed. This year, however, I am hearing Jesus differently...
• Wisdom and Folly by Debra Dean Murphy (11/4/2008)
  [image]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 t...
• Cynical/Dreams by Debra Dean Murphy (11/6/2008)
  [image]It’s hard to be cynical today. It may be easier tomorrow, next week, or next month—it almost certainly will be. But today is a day for head-shaking wonder at what transpired on 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 vi...
• Giving Jesus a Makeover by Randy Cooper (11/12/2008)
  [image]Many years ago a dear Christian sister told me she was convinced that if Jesus appeared in our day, he would surely be a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher. As you might imagine, she admired Baptist...
• Give it All by Joel Shuman (11/12/2008)
  [image]Matthew 25:14-30 The parable of the talents is for me about fear, or rather, about the ways we respond to fear. I have been attentive recently to how much of modern life is controlled, or at least infected, by fear. One reason for my attentiveness is because I am something of an expert where fear is concerned. It’s no secret to my friends...
• Pledging Allegiance by Brian Volck (11/19/2008)
  [image] Ezekiel 34, Psalm 100 (Catholic: Psalm 23), Ephesians 1:15-23 (Catholic: 1 Cor 15: 20-28), Matth...
• Come, Lord Jesus by Jessie Larkins (11/27/2008)

  [image]Advent 1   Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37

  This week we begin the all-too-short journey toward Advent, that season when the Church’s prayer is the urgent and expectant: “Come, Lord Jesus.” For most folks, the Advent hymns and prayers invoking Emmanuel, God-with-us, conjure up domesticated images of babies, a ...
• The End is our Beginning by Erin Martin (12/3/2008)
  [image]Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8 Everyone knows that Advent is about beginnings. The season marks the start of a new Christian year. It heralds the b...
• Camel Hair and the Christ Child by Debra Dean Murphy (12/8/2008)
  [image]Third Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 61:1-4, 9-11; Psalm 126; I Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8; 19-28 Sometimes the contrasts are jarring: 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...
• Revolution Now! by Joel Shuman (12/16/2008)
  [image]Fourth Sunday of Advent: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Psalm 89 (Luke 1:46-55); Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38 The excitement, celebration, and anticipatory hope for change attending the election o...
• Bit Parts by Brian Volck (12/25/2008)
  [image]Luke 2:22-40 Mary and Joseph, following the Law of Moses, bring their son to the temple in Jerusalem offering a sacrifice of two pigeons. The birds themselves were of little consequence, yet necessary, the material fulfillment of the Torah. As Luke’s Jesus later puts it, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of the...