Here’s a transcript of my sermon from last week (Palm Sunday). If you are a pastor please feel free to cut & paste everything. I got much of the historical stuff from commentaries, especially Ken Bailey’s work on Jesus, and from talks by John Ortberg & Rob Bell. 2014.04.15 – Lent 06 John 19:12-19 – Powerful / Not-Powerful We’re going to start with a little game. And we’re going to call it: Powerful / Not-Powerful. How it’ll work... Read more
In September 2005, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann sat with a group of church leaders for a theological discussion as a part of the Emergent Theological Conversation series. In my opinion, this is of the most innovative and fruitful contributions Emergent Village has made over the years. The secret was in the format: they would engage a world class scholar for a couple of days—Stanley Hauerwas, Walter Brueggemann, Miroslav Volf, Jurgen Moltmann to name a few—but instead of prepared lectures... Read more
I confess that yesterday was one of the more surreal days I’ve ever experienced at the church where I pastor, or any church I’ve been a part of for that matter. One of our members, a homeless man named Ed Corbin, collapsed and died on the front steps of our church building just before the service. One minute he was standing outside the front door smoking a cigarette, visiting with one of his good friends—a high school student who comes... Read more
“The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatient violence by cross and resurrection.” – Stanley Hauerwas As we set ourselves toward Palm Sunday, I’m reminded of what incredible patience it takes to follow the one who rode into town on a donkey with tears in his eyes, weeping over a people who were complete confused about the true... Read more
“There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly… Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it,... Read more
CBS announced that Stephen Colbert will be leaving Comedy Central to replace the outgoing David Letterman as host of “The Late Show,” in what has to be seen as a pretty big gamble. Finding a host with enough appeal to a younger demographic to compete with the quick success of Jimmy Fallon’s takeover of “The Tonight Show” must have been at the top of the list for CBS. Colbert certainly ticks that box. But there are risks involved to be... Read more
Data journalist Christopher Ingraham has an interesting piece up at the Washington Post right now. We all know college is expensive, but when compared to day care costs we have a new reality: “A report last fall by Child Care Aware America, a national organization of child-care resource and referral agencies, found that the annual cost of day care for an infant exceeds the average cost of in-state tuition and fees at public colleges in 31 states. The biggest gap is... Read more
“It is a mistake, at least if you are a Christian, to have your life or theology determined by who you think are your enemies.” (Stanley Hauerwas, A Better Hope, p.9) I don’t have a bee in my bonnet about capitalism. I don’t consider the inhabitants of Wall Street to be my enemies. I tend to think that just about any economic system could work pretty well if exercised by a people who have been formed in the story of... Read more
This is my sermon from last week. If you are a pastor, feel free to copy and steal everything. 2014.04.06 – John 11:1-45 Lent 05 – Jesus Raises Lazarus from the dead Eugene Peterson tells a great story about when he was a kid growing up in tiny little town in Montana. It was late August & school hadn’t started yet. Peterson & his friends were bored. Remember that point in the summer when you’d done all the stuff you... Read more
“There has to be a real fear by which one orients his life. What you fear is an indication of what you seek. What do I fear most? Forgetting and ignorance of the inmost truth of my being. To forget who I am, to be lost in what I am not, to fail my own inner truth, to get carried away in what is not true to me, what is outside me, what imposes itself on me from outside…the ignorance... Read more
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