Posts from 2011

• Voice lessons by Jenny Williams (1/6/2011)
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  Psalm 29; Matthew 3:13-17 It’s no wonder that parts of the Church used to observe Christmas, Epiphany, and the Baptism of the Lord as part of one unified and extended celebration.  There’s a lot of revelation going on there.  Christ’s identity is revealed to shepherds,...
• Truth Dazzles Gradually by Kyle Childress (1/12/2011)
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  John 1: 29-42 At age 51, Noah Adams, a host on National Public Radio, abruptly decided he had to have a piano so he invested in a new Steinway upright – a financial commitment that provided extra incentive to practice. Adams tells this delightful story of his first year of learning to play the piano in his book, Piano Lessons.  Yet learning to pl...
• Repent: The Kingdom Is Near by Janice Love (1/20/2011)
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  Epiphany 3:  Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27:1, 4-9, I Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come nea...
• Still the Crucified by Doug Lee (2/3/2011)
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  Isaiah 58:1-9a; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20 When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Paul’s description of his preaching is enough to stop any preacher in her or his tracks. It is certainl...
• Reality Hunger by Ragan Sutterfield (2/10/2011)
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  Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; Matthew 5:21-37 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 surfac...
• Realist of Grace by Brian Volck (2/16/2011)
  [image] Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 5:38-48 “Love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,” Jesus commands. That’s nowhere near as rosy and naïve as the bumper sticker I once came across, in a boutique full of inspirational art ...
• The Economics of Anxiety by Debra Dean Murphy (2/24/2011)
  Eighth Sunday After Epiphany Isaiah 49:8-16; Psalm 131; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34 One of the steadfast realities of following the lectionary is the predictable rhythm of its three-year cycle of readings. Preparing a sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday in 2011?  You might go back to your files from 2008 to see what text(s) you focused on, what themes prevailed, what prayers 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 Eas...
• What it is, and is not, to be an EP Endorser by Brent Laytham (2/26/2011)
  Early on, we said that The Ekklesia Project was a "school for subversive friendship," an opportunity to discover friends you didn't know you had who were busy letting Jesus turn the world right-side up (dethroning the powers in the process). That was in 2000. Now, thanks to Web2.0 social media, it appears that discovering 'friends' is as easy as clicking "accept" whenever Facebook invites me to. I've accumulated 180 'friends' that way, some of whom I actually know. Facebook friending has its advantages. I can see pictures of friends who live far away, feel a bit more connected with persons that I care about, even stalk my teenage children. But it isn't the kind of relationship that could be described as a school for subversive friendship. Why? Because it doesn't really ask mu...
• Valley Girls (and Guys) by Jenny Williams (3/4/2011)
  Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9 Growing up just north of Los Angeles, I was hyper-aware of the San Fernando Valley.  Neither suburban nor Hollywood-cool, the Valley boasted its own style of dress and peculiar language.  Like, fer shure.  Living in the Valley had its difficulties:  stop-and-go freeway traffic during many hours of the day and an oppressive layer of smog bearing down upon the residents most of the year. Our denomination had nine summer camps scattered all over southern California, and all of them were located in the mountains.  Kids from that Valley and the one I grew up in (the San Gabriel Valley) could get away for a week to find God and a little fresh air.  We hiked among towering pines, sat on rocks to sing songs around a fire, and when we...
• God Abstracted by Kyle Childress (3/8/2011)
  Matthew 4:1-11 Lent begins with Jesus fresh from the waters of his baptism, being led by the Spirit into the wilderness.  At baptism, Jesus is reminded that he is called as God’s anointed, the Messiah.  But what kind of messiah is he going to be?  It is in the wilderness, where everything is stripped away, in prayer and fasting that Jesus seeks to clarify who he is and what he is going to do. Satan, the Great Deceiver, shows up to steer Jesus away from God’s call upon him and uses three of the greatest temptations for those who want to change this world: economics/money – turning stones to bread; religion – spectacular religion which will make the crowds want to follow you anywhere; and politics – to get the power to make things turn out the way you want. <...
• Being Born From Above by Janice Love (3/15/2011)
  Lent 2:  Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17 Through rain, desert, wind and snow Abraham and Sarah had to go even though they nothing know. - Oskar Sundmark, 11 years Even though they nothing know.  This is what it means to trust in the God we see revealed in Jesus, what it means to be Christian - to drop our nets, pick up our cross and follow Christ.  Or as Soren Kierkegaard puts it:  “To be joyful out on 70,000 fathoms of water, many, many miles from all human help – yes, that is something great!  To swim in the shallows in the company of waders is not the religious.” It goes against our instinct though, as dying does, to blindly go as an individual or as a church where God might send us.  Especially in a culture that likes to encourage car...
• Engaging Jesus by Doug Lee (3/22/2011)
  John 4:5-42 How long does it take to know someone truly? A year, a decade, a lifetime? Whether working alongside someone, putting in the hard work of committed friendship, or sharing the blessings and labors of marriage, we can be confident that we can know a person’s identity, aims, and motivations with the passage of time. Yet after two millennia, can we be so certain that we know Jesus? Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman is yet another story from John’s gospel that punctures our certainty that we have Jesus triangulated. We may feel as if we know Jesus after generations of slotting him in our christological taxonomies, tradition, and piety. But time and again, Jesus eludes our fully apprehending him. Last week Nicodemus approached Jesus and began by utter...
• Internalizing what Externals Mean by Jake Wilson (3/31/2011)
  1 Samuel 16:1-13

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  We live in a culture obsessed with appearance.  Tanning beds promise us sun-kissed bodies year round.  Moleskine notebooks remind others of how creative we are and our designer eye wear helps us not only to see but to be seen.  In this image obsessed culture we are tempted to continually modify the external, often in an effort to avoid the work of tending to the inner life wh...
• Snorting at Death by Debra Dean Murphy (4/7/2011)
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  Fifth Sunday in Lent Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:1-11; John 11:1-45 The texts for this Sunday leave no doubt about where the Lenten journey will end. A week before Palm/Passion Sunday and 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...
• The Way Down by Brian Volck (4/12/2011)
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  by Brian Volck Matthew 2:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7(8,9); Phillipians 2: (5)6-11; Matthew 16:14-27:66 “I will bury Jesus (in) myself.” -From The Saint Matthew Passion, BWV 244; Part 2, No.65 I’m not qualified to judge the theological soundness of that old saw, “God draws straight with crooked lines.” We know that Palm Sunday’s readings are a push into the arcing cu...
• Why Do You Weep? by Ragan Sutterfield (4/22/2011)
  Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18 “Why do you weep?”  That seems to be the central question of the Gospel reading this Easter Sunday.   It is the question the angels ask of Mary when she looks into the tomb; it is the question the resurrected Christ asks when he finds Mary in the garden and she mistakes him for the gardener. When the other disciples, Peter and John, came to see that the tomb was empty, they left—satisfied with the reality they thought they understood—Jesus was gone, his body taken, one more event in a series of tragedies that had seen 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 sta...
• Seeing the Lord by Kyle Childress (4/26/2011)
  John 20:19-31 The Gospel Lesson the Second Sunday of Easter is always John 20:19-31 and the story of Thomas missing out on seeing the risen Christ that Easter evening.  When told, by the other disciples, that they had seen the Lord, Thomas says, “I won’t believe it until I can touch his scars.”  A week later he made sure he was present with the community of disciples, and sure enough he saw the Lord. Thomas did not see the risen Lord the first time, because the resurrection of Christ makes no sense apart from the community of his disciples. Early in the movie The Big Lebowski, Walter is talking to Dude.  Donny, their other close friend, keeps trying to interrupt and ask a question.  Walter dismisses Donny with a line that has become famous, “Shut-up Donny, you’...
• What’s goin’ on? by Jenny Williams (5/4/2011)
  Luke 24:13-35 “Are you the only person who doesn’t know what’s been going on for the past few days?” Apparently Jesus had not been reading Facebook. Or listening to NPR. Or reading the newspaper. Seriously—how could this guy not know what’s been happening? In the last few days the whole world has been in an uproar over the death of one man. Some people thought he should be killed. Others mourned his loss. Others didn’t know what to think. Sound familiar? One man, killed at the hands of the government, whom many religious people were glad to see murdered. The death of Osama bin Laden has dominated discourse over the past week. In the wake of his death, some people are throwing parties, some are ready to break out the duct tape and plastic sheeting, and the rest of us ...
• Followers by Janice Love (5/10/2011)
  Easter 4:  Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2: 19-25, John 10: 1-10 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…All who believed were together and had all things in common;  they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people… So – what the hell happened?  Luke’s description of the early church, after the disciples’ baptism in the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Peter’s surprisingly fearless sermon, is certainly a rosy one.  Where is this church, because I want to go there?!
• Preparing for Departure by Jake Wilson (5/19/2011)
  This week’s lectionary reading leads us into the farewell discourse (John 13.31-17.26) as Jesus prepares the disciples for his departure.  It can seem a little disorienting to follow up a month’s worth of post-resurrection appearances with Jesus preparing his disciples for his looming death on the cross. After all, for the last several weeks we have celebrate that Jesus is alive and on the loose, appearing in locked rooms, in gardens and on the road to Emmaus.  However, the day of Ascension is fast approaching and the lectionary readings of the next two weeks use the farewell discourse to prepare us for the Ascension of the resurrected Christ. On the eve of their last supper together, as Jesus prepared his disciples for his death, the question looming over the young Jesus mov...
• The Close-at-Hand God by Debra Dean Murphy (5/25/2011)
  Sixth Sunday of Easter Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21 “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” John 14:20 For several weeks now the doomsday prophecy of one Harold Camping has been on the minds of many. First, it was the shared anticipation as the projected date got closer—and the requisite jokes about being left behind. Then it was the (no-surprise) failure of the prediction which resulted in . . . more jokes about being left behind. Attempts to counter Camping’s misguided views consisted mostly of pointing 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 f...
• Gospel Sequel by Doug Lee (5/31/2011)

  Ascension Sunday

  Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53 “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” While last month’s headline grabbing prediction of Jesus’ return, the rescue of believers from the earth to heaven, and the onset of tribulation for an unbelieving world (now revised to October) belongs to an extremist Camp(ing), the basic eschatological question underlies much of American Christianity. The apostles’ question sounds contemporary two millennia later as believers gaze heavenward and count down until the end of the world, while others with a less definite timetable still await a rapture. Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, scoffing at such expectations is easy, especially after announced deadlines pass. Jes...
• A Quieter Pentecost by Brian Volck (6/6/2011)
  Acts 2:1-11(or 2-21); 1 Corinthians 12: 3-13; John 20:19-23 The Catholic Church’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) is, ideally, a process lasting many months, during which unbaptized catechumens and baptized but unconfirmed candidates learn from and discern with sponsors and other members of the church community they hope to become part of. My home parish takes this seriously. While the rite is meant to lead to reception into the church at the Easter Vigil, there’s no rushing, no shortcuts, no simply going with the flow. The rigor and probing reflection often make me wish I hadn’t completed my own initiation so young. From Easter to Ascension, newly-received members (called neophytes, which means “new living things”) wear their white robes each Sunday at litur...
• “What’s Up” by Ed Searcy (6/11/2011)
  An Ascension Sermon (please note Ed’s diagnosis and pray for him)
 Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53 “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers” (Eph. 1:15-16). Sometimes Paul is frustrated with the church. Sometimes he is exasperated with the church. Sometimes he is just plain mad at the church. But not always. When Paul prays for the little church in Ephesus he is filled with gratitude for a congregation that trusts its life to Jesus and, as a result, has an abundance of love for one another. I know what it is to be filled with gratitude for a congregation that trusts its life to Jesus and, so, is marked by love and affec...
• Family Ties by Jenny Williams (6/14/2011)
  Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20 One of our church members, Sally, is serving a sentence in a regional jail.  She joined our church on Pentecost last year, and though she had been baptized as a child, had never been brought up in church.  She’s had very little Christian formation, so she set out to use her incarceration to engage in an intense study of the Bible.  The growth that she is experiencing during this time is phenomenal.  As they say in my neck of the woods, “The Holy Spirit has really gotten hold of her.” When I visited her this week, in a very excited voice she said to me right off the bat, “I finally understand what family is all about!”  She went on to tell me that a woman in her family, Kelly, just discovered that man she had always known as her father was...
• Here I Am by Janice Love (6/20/2011)
  Pentecost 2, Year 2 (Sunday, June 26, 2011): Genesis 22: 1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6: 12-23, Matthew 10: 40-42 Here we are.  The latest Advent to Easter cycles of the Christian seasons have now been rounded out by the great gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, the formation of the church and time to reflect on the Trinitarian God we worship.  The church, now equipped with everything it needs to proclaim to the world Christ, crucified and risen, begins the long season after Pentecost of ever deepening discipleship.  And what a story we have to start off with – Genesis 22! To be honest, this is a story I have skirted somewhat with my almost 8 year old son.  Maybe because it hits a little too close to home, he being a long awaited (13 years) child.  How do I tell him of a God who demands of Ab...
• (Mis)Remembered Words by Brian Volck (6/27/2011)
  Zechariah 9:9-10; Matthew 11:25-30 In an October 13, 1813 letter to his former political rival, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson described his work on a short book, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. This was Jefferson’s own distillation of gospel texts, in which he meant to include, “the very words only of Jesus,” while eliminating all elements Jefferson deemed irrational.  Jefferson assumed the parts he found superstitious were simply the result of ignorant men who misremembered or misunderstood Jesus’ “pure principles.” When he was done with his editing, Jefferson wrote, “There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of ...
• Jacob, Despite Jacob by Jake Wilson (7/7/2011)
  [image]In Preaching and Reading the Lectionary: A Three-Dimensional Approach to the Liturgical Year, O. Wesley Allen Jr. advocates for a what he calls a cumulative preaching strategy that focuses more on the sweep of a year’s worth of preaching than any one particular sermon.  As Allen explains “all pastors know (or at least hope), deep in their hearts, that the great power of preaching lies less in the individual sermon and more in the cumulative effect of preaching week in and week out to the same congregation, to the same commu...
• Life Among the Weeds by Ragan Sutterfield (7/13/2011)
  Pentecost +5:  Romans 8:12-25 and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 We live among the weeds—they crowd around us, their roots intertwine with ours, and sometimes the suffocate us.  Surely the harvest will be less bountiful when we allow the weeds to grow among the wheat—we can imagine the full vibrant growth of their grain as they have the full resources of the soil.  Couldn’t we just have some genetically modified wheat, some holy Round-Up to kill the weeds? Perhaps, but Jesus’ hearers would have 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 t...
• Where Strangers Quickly Become Friends by Jamie Gates (7/18/2011)
  The Ekklesia Project Gathering is a place where strangers quickly become friends.  This is my third Gathering, having come last year and once way back in 2002.  I'm learning that this is a time and place for the growth and discipleship of sub-versive friendships for the sake of more clearly seeing and naming the Reign of God, for the reconciliation of the Body of Christ and for more faithful participation in the Reign of God.  It is learning to see and speak with prophetic eyes and a prophetic voice.   My wife, Michelle, and I participated together this year.  The topic is very familiar to us; we live with the complexities and beauty of welcoming the immigrant in San Diego/Tijuana every day.  We thought we'd be able to contribute a little from our life living as regular borde...
• Mustard Seeds and Evangelism by Kyle Childress (7/20/2011)
  Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52 Being a Baptist in Texas the very air that I breathe is full of evangelism, growth, outreach, and marketing.  Everything is either big or needs to be bigger and it seems that the church is no exception.  Here in Big Texas (and America seems to be just a bigger version of Texas) it’s all about Big Business and trans-national corporations, mega-churches, and mega-plexes.  We want Big Answers and Big Solutions to Global Problems and we want to super-size everything from fries to storage buildings to football stadiums.  Politicians and economists of every persuasion keep telling us that a bigger economic pie is the answer to everyone’s concerns.  Closer to home, e...
• Madmen, Destruction, and the Art of God's Patience by Brent Laytham (7/25/2011)
  Sometimes my worlds race toward collision in frightening, yet illuminating ways. Friday, I watched the entertaining story of a ‘madman’ thwarted on the brink of high-tech global genocide by Captain America. Later than night, 60 days of growing zucchini vines was destroyed in less than 60 minutes of torrential rain. Saturday morning, I heard the tragic news of a ‘madman’ who wreaked local carnage in Norway using a few guns and a truckload of fertilizer. In the aftermath, our temptation is to mouth platitudes about justice which are usually little more than vengeful sentiments in disguise. “A maximum sentence of 21 years? That hardly seems right!” What seldom tempts us in such reactive moments is the po...
• The More You Get, the More You Have by Debra Dean Murphy (7/26/2011)
  [image]Seventh Sunday After Pentecost Matthew 14:13-21 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. 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 multitude fed on the beach (a detail unique to Matthew’s version of the story), the ...
• For God So Loved the World... by Ekklesia Project (7/28/2011)
  For God So Loved the World He Sent Nahum A sermon shared with us by John C. Nugent of Delta Community. Michigan pastor, Rob Bell, recently made a splash in the media by going public with his "unorthodox" position on the afterlife. What has raised the hackles of several readers is Bell's insistence in Love Wins that, when it comes to eternal destinies, God's love overrides our sinfulness—not just for the elect (which would be orthodox for some), not just for those who say the sinner's prayer or are immersed into Christ (which would be orthodox for others), and not just for those who actually seek first God's kingdom with their whole life (which would be orthodox for still others)—but that God's love overrides the sinfulness of all ...
• One Big Happy Family by Brent Laytham (8/5/2011)
  Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Genesis 37:1-28 Typology has gotten a bad rap in modernity, but Scripture isn’t Scripture without it. So both Old Testament passages on offer this week invite theological reflection on a provident God who orders deliverance to and through Jesus of Nazareth. I'll concentrate on Genesis 37. “This is the story of the family of Jacob” (37:2)—our story, people of God. It isn’t pretty. Bad reports, preferential loves, internecine hatred, braggadocio followed by “even more” hatred (37:8), conspiracy to kill, deception, and betrayal for 20 pieces of silver. This story of the family of Jacob—our ecclesial story—puts ugly on display.
• Embodying God’s Unity in a Fragmented World by C. Christopher Smith (8/9/2011)
  Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 133, Romans 11:1-2, 29-32

  Psal[image]m 133 begins with a refrain that will be familiar to many of our ears: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!,” but it is the powerful imagery of the latter two verses of this brief psalm that drive home the depths of the Go...

• Signposts and Seeds by Jim McCoy (8/17/2011)
  Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 1:8-2:10 Psalm 124 Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:13-20 This week’s comments are pointings and plantings rather than a single extended reflection. My focus is on Matthew 16, but first a word about the other readings. Rene Girard’s seminal insights, as well as those of his able interpreters (and critics) provide a profound context for the lectionary passages of the day. It is worth wrestling with how these insights shine light on parts of the texts that can be overlooked in more conventional readings: seeing through the ...
• Follow the Leader by Jessie Larkins (8/22/2011)
  11th Sunday after Pentecost Matthew 16:21-28 “We believe that the truth of the gospel cannot be separated from the kind of lives required for the recognition of that truth” -Stanley Hauerwas “Our instinct to embrace Jesus’ exemplary goodness while avoiding the blood of the cross is a “stumbling block” to God’s mission in the world.” -Charles Hambrick-Stowe At some point in my growing up years I remember seeing, on the bookshelf in our living room, the spine of a book whose title was Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Even at a young age, I can clearly remember sensing the irony and nonsense of that phrase. Who makes war to get peace? Now I understand why its author would have suggested that the dominan...
• James Hunter, Neo-Anabaptists, and the Ekklesia Project by Ekklesia Project (8/23/2011)
  EP Endorser and former regular bLOGOS contributor, Mark Ryan, shares his review of a book likely to be of interest to many in EP. James Davison Hunter's To Change the World (Oxford, 2010) begins with the claim that Christians are called to do just that: change the world. This vocation is grounded in Christian identification with the creating and re-creating God of scripture who issues what Hunter calls “the creation mandate.” Asserting that modern persons understand world-change primarily as cultural change, Hunter launches into a sophisticated, clear discussion of culture and the dynamics of cultural change. In the first of the three essays that make up the book, Hunter debunks conceptions of cultural change which trade in some form o...
• The Far Country by Matthew Morin (8/25/2011)
  EP endorser Matt Morin preached this sermon not long after the Summer Gathering: Immigration meets the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15:11-32; Ephesians 2:11-22 The fifteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel begins with a group of scribes and Pharisees grumbling about Jesus’s habit of becoming friends with social outcasts: “This fellow welcomes law-breakers and eats with them.” It might be tempting for us file this episode under the heading of “pride” and use it to repeat the old trope about self-righteous Pharisees: “There they go again, those elitist Pharisees—always thinking they are better than everybody else, when in fact t...
• Fallible Church, Deliberate Grace by Doug Lee (8/29/2011)
  12^th Sunday after Pentecost Ezekiel 33:1-11 Romans 13:8-14 Matthew 18:15-20   It is strangely comforting to hear Jesus talking about a sinful church. Some heap admiration on Jesus’ teaching, and then dismiss it as too lofty to be attainable. Turning the other cheek is for the spiritual elite. Loving one’s enemies is for the age to come. The Beatitudes are true spiritually, but not in practice. But if ever we wondered whether Jesus were a realist or not, his words in Matthew 18 put that question to rest. The church Jesus envisions is not some idealized community we have not ...
• The Reckoning by Janice Love (9/6/2011)
  13th Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 14: 19-31 Psalm 114 Romans 14: 1-12 Matthew 18: 21-35 Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, admits to her admiration of those who understand “the risk of prayer.” She describes the tearful, sorrowful response of two faithful Jews leaving each day to engage in the always dangerous practice of prayer, not knowing if they would survive the experience to return to their families. It is this same risk we undertake when we host scripture, actually seeking to encounter a Word from the God whose fury can consume like st...
• The God Who Fits Our Agenda: 9/11 Then and Now by Ekklesia Project (9/11/2011)
  Debra Dean Murphy reflects on how Americans framed 9/11 to make the Creator of the Universe into a useful deity. ...
• Bread from Heaven by Jake Wilson (9/14/2011)
  14th Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 16.2-15, Psalm 145.1-8, Philippians 1.21-30, Matthew 20.1-16 I’m the oldest of four lively children. As an adult I’m very aware of the strain that my siblings and I put on my parents. Raising children does not co...
• So Much Unfairness of Things by Brian Volck (9/20/2011)
  15th Sunday after Pentecost 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21: 23-32 “You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the ... appalling ... strangeness of the mercy of God.” -Graham Greene, Brighton Rock Mrs. Turpin, the main character in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” (published 1965) is grateful. She’s aware, after all, that God could have created things differently. She might not have been white or middle class, which, she thanks God, she is. She’s even grateful that her daily, sometimes distasteful, encounters with poor blacks and “white tras...
• Let Others Decide by Ragan Sutterfield (9/28/2011)
  16th Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 5:1-7 Philippians 3:4b-14 Matthew 21:33-46 I call myself a gardener. I've even written how-to articles on growing things. But anyone who took a look at the burned-over mess in my front yard this year would have their doubts. Whatever my thoughts about myself, whatever a byline might state, this summer I failed to live up to that title. I failed, in my distractions and the particular 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...
• Why Do We Build the Wall? by Ekklesia Project (10/2/2011)
  EP endorser Tony Hunt offers this meditation on a theme from this past summer's gathering: Immigration, the Church, and Hadestown Since the Ekklesia Project Gathering this summer, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on how immigration is explored by one of the better records of 2010: Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, a folk opera that reinterprets the classical story of Eurydice and Orpheus. The opera opens with anxiety over Eurydice’s and Orpheus’ imminent marriage. She’s unsure whether they’ll be able to pay for everything. Though Orpheus assures her that nature’s abundance will provide, she remains doubtful, plagued by fears of economic scarcity. Soon, however, we’re introduced to Hades, Lord of the Underworld. Hades, the “King of m...
• It's About Us by Debra Dean Murphy (10/6/2011)
  18^th Sunday After Pentecost; 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14 Perhaps our response to Sunday’s lectionary gospel text ought to be Quaker-like silence. It’s Matthew, after all, so we are familiar with the uncompromising eschatology. But what to say? It’s a passage that contains one of the hard(est) sayings of Jesus: plenty of mystery but seemingly little grace.[image] In Matthew’s version of t...
• Who Decides? by Kyle Childress (10/11/2011)
  18th Sunday after Pentecost 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 45:1-7 OR Exodus 33:12-13 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22 Our Gospel lesson is the well-known but short debate between Jesus and the Religious Authorities over rendering taxes to Caesar or to God. It is common for us to hear Jesus saying, “Give unto Caesar that which is his and give unto God that which is his,” as a statement on the separation of Church and State. Only in the most indirect way is this a statement on church and state. It sounds l...
• Leadership Lessons by Jenny Williams (10/20/2011)
  Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Let’s give credit where credit is due. I had never read the stories about Moses in light of what it means to be a leader of God’s people until I heard Lillian Daniel preach at an Ekklesia Project Gathering many years back. As a good seminarian I had only thought of Exodus as a witness to God’s preferential option for the poor or as a testimony to the fact that the people of God have always been whiny. Lillian delightfully re-narrated one of the Moses stories and suggested that if he were to be an effective leader he might need to take a course in anger management. I sup...
• The Deeper and Richer Life of Gratitude by C. Christopher Smith (10/25/2011)
  Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37 “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever.”

  Gratitude is at the core of our identity as the people of God.  God has created us and continually provides for us.  Even when times get tough in our broken world, when we’re hungry and thirsty and our soul is fainting within us (v. 5), God hears our cries and delivers us.  The Israelite people certainly knew their share of troubles – being slaves in Egypt, wandering in the desert for forty years, going into exile, and so on – but yet the Psalms, their prayerbook that gave shape to th...

• The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jim McCoy (11/2/2011)
  Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time I Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13 Six months ago I was doing my part to rail against the folly of doomsday predictions and the dangers of rapture theology. At the time, Harold Camping and his May 21 prediction were the epicenter of media frenzy, not only in The Rapture Gazette and late-night paid programming, but also in above-the-fold NY Times articles and primetime NPR stories. This truly bewildering sensation spawned billboards, talking head reports, and “end of the world” parties. I still shake my head ...
• Jesus is Coming - Look Busy by Jessie Larkins (11/9/2011)
  Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Judges 4:1-7 OR Proverbs 31:10-31 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30 With the attention demanded by All Saints, Christ the King, and the First Sunday of Advent this month, the preacher has little time to spend with this last so-called Ordinary Sunday of the Church year. In my own United Methodist tradition this also happens to be the time of year when Finance committees are urgently preparing 2012 budgets and pastors are nervously writing stewardship sermon...
• Lamb and Shepherd: The Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe by Janice Love (11/17/2011)
  The Reign of Christ Christ the King Ezekiel 34: 11-16 Ephesians 1: 15-23 OR 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 Matthew 25: 31-46 There is a poster on the wall in the weight room of our local recreation centre where I go twice a week for strength training, along with some amazing 70 and 80 year olds (yes, at forty-six my nickname is “the kid”). I try not to look at the poster as it gets my goat, blithely proclaiming that the destination matters not, only the journey is important. Except...
• From Where Does Our Help Come? by Jake Wilson (11/23/2011)

  [image]1st Sunday of Advent

  Isaiah 64:1-9 Psalm 80:1-7, 117-19 1 Cor. 1:3-9 Mark 13:24-37 On the first Sunday of Advent,...
• The Living Gospel by Doug Lee (12/1/2011)
  [image] Second Sunday of Advent Isaiah 40:1-11 Psalm 85 2 Peter 3:8-15a The Church as Highway Department by Ragan Sutterfield (12/6/2011)

  Third Sunday of Advent (Year B) Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Luke 1:46-55 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8, 19-28 Not long ago I heard a program on NPR about the use of satellite images by human rights groups as a way of tracking atrocities in South Sudan.  Using before and after images human rights workers 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 prece...
• And it was sufficient by Kyle Childress (12/13/2011)
  Fourth Sunday of Advent Luke 1: 26-38 I love the way Luke and Matthew begin their Gospels. Both tell us of these plain, ordinary people, Mary and Joseph, who obeyed God, and through whom God begins the extraordinary work of salvation for all people. Traditionally, the church has called Mary the first disciple. She was the first to believe and obey. And even though Luke tells her story with a bit more drama than Matthew’s telling of Joseph’s, we still get the message that here was an ordinary young woman – really a teenage girl – who embodied extraordinary courage and faith in God to be able to say, “Let it be to me according to your will.” Or to put it more mundanely, Mary said yes.by Debra Dean Murphy (12/20/2011)

  Christmas Luke 2:1-14; John 1:1-14 “The Ancient of Days has become an infant.” John Chrysostom, 4^th century On Christmas Eve we read Luke’s dramatic account of the birth of Jesus. On the first Sunday of Christmas (or, as it happens this year, Christmas Day) we read the prologue from John’s gospel. At first glance these texts seem to offer two very 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’...
• To ponder in our hearts by Brian Volck (12/28/2011)
  Numbers 6: 22-27 Galatians 4:4-7 or Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 2:15-21 “Caro cardo salutis” (The body is the hinge of salvation) – Tertullian The tragically divided trinitarian churches find it difficult to definitively name this Sunday. The Orthodox, as well as some Anglican and Lutheran churches, celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision. So did Catholics until the 1960s, when the day transformed into the Octave of the Nativity and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Those using the Revised Common Lectionary celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus or the...