In last Sunday’s sermon, I contrasted Nicodemus’s careful faith that made him come to Jesus under the cover of night with Abraham and Sarah’s willingness to leave it all behind and go where God called them. God called Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and set off on a great adventure. God never explained where they were going or why, but they trusted the whisper of the wind and went. I wonder if Jesus was calling Nicodemus to do... Read more

This week the bedrock of an era of mainline Protestantism in North America, the Alban Institute, announced that it was closing. For many of us, news of Alban’s collapse felt like a death in the church family, leaving us behind and bewildered as we reconcile ourselves with their legacy. It’s a Holy Saturday kind of feeling. These are the kinds of Lent-infused questions flying around in my earshot: Should we see this as one more sign that the Protestant Church... Read more

As I write this, I am sitting through a second day of nonstop rain. It is cool and damp and grey and gloomy. I don’t know how my friends in the Northwest do this. Oh, I know the forecast is for it to be clear and sunny in a couple of days, and I know that this time of year in Atlanta flowers and trees will be knocking one another down competing to be the most resplendent. Spring comes early... Read more

Some years ago I read Tim Hansel’s book You Gotta Keep Dancing: In the midst of life’s hurts, you can choose joy. I was too young to know much about the real hurts of life, but this was a book I went back to again and again. In fact, when we moved from Dallas to Atlanta, I left more than 1,000 books from my library behind, but this is one non-scholarly volume I kept. Hansel is someone who knows almost... Read more

Thought for the day: An object at rest tends to remain at rest…unless something comes along and moves it. Let the Spirit move you out of your comfort zone and inspire you to do something great today! Read more

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. Unless you are in New York, Boston, or Savannah that may just mean that you are wearing green today. If you are lucky it means that you are meeting friends for dinner or “happy hour.” I wonder where that term comes from. Is getting drinks at a discount really what makes that the happy hour of our day? Unfortunately, all too often, the truth is that, for many of us, that really is the happiest hour... Read more

Several years ago I had a falling out with a friend over dinner. I had worked had all week, then went to the store and bought bread and wine and worked for hours to prepare a meal that I thought they would enjoy, but they didn’t show up. When I called to check on them, they said, “Oh yeah, we just had such a busy week we decided to stay in and relax.” As I scraped the food into the... Read more

For some reason, I’ve been obsessing about the difference between faith and presumption. It is easy to see presumptuous belief systems in the fundamentalists who think they have the entire, and only, truth about God. When someone issues a religious edict I’m not sure what makes me angrier, the fact that they are so certain they are right, or the fact that I am so certain they are wrong. You see, we all can be self-righteous and absolutely confident that... Read more

For more than a decade, Dr. Bruce Thielemann was my pastor. I listened to his sermons on cassette tape almost every week. In one sermon he told this story: Two summers ago I received a telephone call from my physician, who also happened to be the physician of my most beloved seminary professor. He called to tell me that my old prof, who had been retired for many years (he was in his eighty-sixth year at that time) had been... Read more

In the mid-1980s, I pastored a small church in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a mostly lesbian and gay congregation whose little building was firebombed three times. The first, and the worst, happened before I arrived, and, by the time I arrived, the tiny group had been diminished even further. The church rallied eventually and even outgrew that building, but there were some difficult and depressing days that left me fantasizing about better days in a better place. I meant that... Read more