Today is Lent 5–the gospel text is John 11, John’s account of the raising of Lazarus. I had the privilege of giving the sermon at St. Matthew’s Trinity Lutheran Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island this morning. Here’s what I said. During my childhood, we did not go to movies—that was something, along with a bunch of other things, that good Baptists didn’t do. But we did watch television—except on Sundays. So my brother and I occasionally saw movies on television,... Read more
I spent last week on a wonderful trip to Sweden with my son. Today is Saint Patrick’s Day. Those two things go together. Trust me. Some time ago, I had a brief locker room conversation with a campus security guard who frequently tortured himself at the gym around the same time that I did. He noted how much he was dreading Saint Patrick’s Day the next day. “I’ll be here dealing with drunk students for twelve hours,” he predicted. “It’s... Read more
I just returned yesterday from a wonderful week with Justin in Sweden! To get back in the blog post saddle after a week off, here’s a post from a couple of years ago that takes a look from a different angle at today’s gospel–The Prodigal Son. An alternative title for this essay might be “A Comedian Interprets the Parable of the Prodigal Son.” In the most recent “Faith for Normal People” podcast, “the other God-ordained podcast on the Internet” (Bible... Read more
Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12 In his collection of essays Breakfast at the Victory, James Carse writes about the spiritual lessons he learned when the water at his family’s rural New England cabin started tasting funny one summer. It turned out that the wooden cover over the cabin’s well had collapsed under the weight of a deer or a bear, and was polluting the water that fed the well. Carse’s essay explores, with some... Read more
Today is my birthday, and it’s a big one. The big 7-0! My age has never been a big deal for me—as Jeanne always says, “It’s just a number.” But I’m 70 today . . . and that particular number has caught my attention. “70!!” I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks. “That’s really f—king old!” Old enough that I woke up a couple of weeks ago and thought, “I guess it’s time to start getting social security checks!”... Read more
All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change These are the opening lines in “Earthseed: The Books of the Living,” a collection of notebooks compiled by Lauren Olamina, the main character in Octavia Butler’s dystopian, frighteningly believable vision of the near future, Parable of the Sower. Lauren is a late teen who lives inside a gated community with her Baptist preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from... Read more
Today’s gospel reading gets us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to remember the 70s and 80s will recall that a regular occurrence at baseball or football games either in person or on television was, when the camera panned the stands, to see a person—often wearing a colorful fright wig—holding up a large homemade poster board sign with a cryptic reference that made sense only for initiates: John 3:16. I often imagined the confusion that many might have... Read more
Human beings never behave so badly as when they believe they are protecting God. Barbara Brown Taylor Every time someone claims that we live in a country founded on “Christian principles,” I think of Benjamin Franklin. His Autobiography is often a text at the appropriate time in the interdisciplinary program I teach in—it’s short, pithy, no nonsense and quintessentially American. Exactly what I would expect from Ben. He doesn’t say a lot about organized religion other than to express his distaste... Read more
Today is the first Sunday of Lent; the gospel reading is always one a treatment of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. This year we get Matthew’s version. But today I’m particularly interested in the first reading from the Jewish scriptures–an edited version of Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden from Genesis 2 and 3. It’s a story that lose some of its power if the whole context and narrative is not considered. I am not overstating the... Read more
Today is Ash Wednesday, which for a hardcore Protestant such as I presents several issues. One Wednesday, the student in front of me in line at the little on-campus coffee shop in the building next to mine plopped what looked like a pre-packaged chicken Caesar salad on the counter. While fumbling for her card to pay, the cashier said “that isn’t chicken, you know. It’s tofu.” “WHAT?” the student cried. “It’s Ash Wednesday. We aren’t allowed to serve meat on... Read more
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