Lectionary Reflections for Sunday, July 3, 2016 In the summer of 2004 my wife and I were invited to the islands of Fiji to offer a workshop on preaching. The Pacific Theological College on Suva, the country’s largest island, each year offered a continuing education event that brought together pastors and church workers from many surrounding island nations. We were invited to Fiji by a remarkable graduate of Perkins School of Theology, my seminary, Dr. David Upp who has spent his... Read more

We all have had mentors in our lives, acknowledged and unacknowledged, and thus we have all been mentees, pupils, students of those mentors. My wife of nearly 47 years, Diana, has been my best and most trusted mentor, leading and guiding me to emotional parts of myself that I hardly knew I had, to depths of love and loving I would never have experienced without her insistent and tender directions. She was, is, and remains the true light of my... Read more

The Old Testament text for this Sunday, June 19, is I Kings 19, that wonderful story of Elijah’s confrontation with YHWH on the sacred mountain of Horeb. I have already wrestled with that text in my reflections on I Kings 17 two Sundays ago. So, rather than pour through that tale again, looking for further insights, that I know are there, I thought I would turn to the Psalms for the day, 42 and 43. As I reread those psalms,... Read more

I have been teaching others about the wonders of the Hebrew Bible for nearly fifty years, and have had a marvelous time in the process. It is sheer delight to watch people’s eyes grow wide as they hear that that first testament is chock full of goodies that they had not heard, or had heard in such a jaundiced way as to force them to cease hearing altogether. I am nothing less than a Hebrew Bible cheerleader, and I have... Read more

As an ordained man in the church, I have long taken my status and power for granted. When I stand to preach in my black “crow” robe (I call it such because when one raises arms in this garment, it looks for all the world like a crow taking flight), trimmed with blue, blue chevrons embroidered on the sleeves to announce loudly that I have a PhD, I expect to be taken seriously as one who actually knows a little... Read more

Who does not like to be a winner? The taste of victory is so sweet, to be on top, to be queen of the hill! There are few feelings in life like that moment when you swagger off the court, or out of the boardroom, knowing that you have “killed it,” as the saying now goes. Your smile is broad, your inner joy bubbles over, your arm pumps involuntarily, while your legs threaten to leap off the ground. I aced... Read more

I can hardly remember a time when the insights of Lady Wisdom are more needed than 2016 in the USA. Whenever a controversy of any sort arises — the environment, political statements from every side, child rearing, economic policy — the Facebook and Twitter universes light up with full-throated, apoplectic fury. I try never to read, much less contribute to, the fray, but at times I cannot help myself. I gaze with mounting horror at the ill-mannered, rude, crude ad... Read more

In September, 2014, I realized one of my lifelong ambitions; I traveled to the northwestern corner of modern Rumania. Like many lovers of the legend of Dracula, I imagined that his part of the world would be characterized by deep, impenetrable forests, overlarge and ravenous wolves, dark ravines, and swift carriages, guided by hunchbacked drivers with thick accents and flaming eyes. The reality, as often in these childhood nightmares, was quite different. My wife and I drove from Budapest, Hungary... Read more

September 2, 2015 was Acoma Pueblo Feast Day. I doubt many know of this event much outside of a 75-mile radius around the pueblo, sitting atop a 500 foot butte, west of Albuquerque, not many miles off of busy I-40. A community has existed on this striking spot since at least the 11th century. It was probably inhabited when the battle of Hastings was fought in what is now England in 1066CE. It bills itself as the oldest continuously inhabited place... Read more