Last year when I spent a week helping out at the migrant shelter in Tijuana, I met a woman who was very pregnant, within weeks of her due date. She was from Guatemala, from the mountains, she told me in the best Spanish she could put together. She was Mayan, and Spanish was her second […]
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Incarnation
The incarnation. This season is a celebration of the incarnation, of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. These stories about the advent of Jesus, the stories about his birth and life and death—all of those stories are glimpses of God, they are announcements of what God’s presence looks like in our world and in […]
What should we do?
“What then should we do?” (Luke 3:10). That’s what the crowds say. That’s their response to John the Baptist, when he stands along the banks of the river Jordan, calling the people to repentance. “You brood of vipers!… Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (3:7). The […]
You hold me, I hold you
I’ve mentioned before that I used to teach classes in prisons, mostly at one in Durham and another in Raleigh, both of them state prisons. But I also would drive up the highway to Butner where I’d teach at a federal prison. I had more freedom there to teach what I wanted. On the last […]
What I did not understand
At the beginning of the story of Job, at the beginning of the book, Job had it all—wealth, possessions, family, perfect health. Then that life is taken from him. All of it. Oxen and donkeys, sheep and camels, sons and daughters, and he’s afflicted with sores, sores all over his body, and he sits in […]
Surely you know
After thirty chapters of silence, God finally speaks to Job. God answers with questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4) “Where is the way to the dwelling of light?” (38:19) “Have you entered the storehouses of snow, or have you seen the storehouses of hail?” (Job 38:22) “Who has […]
Longing for intimacy
What I despise most about myself is my aloofness. I pull back when I should reach out. Afraid of rejection, I hide away from the friendships in which I may be truly known. Stung by some minor offense, I react with a cold shoulder. This scares me most in how I relate to my kids. […]
To fear God for nothing
Job has been blessed with the good life. He has it all. He has what’s sounds like to be a lovely family, grown children who like each other enough to spend time together. And he has enough resources for everyone’s wellbeing—enough sheep and camels and oxen and donkeys. He has been blessed with wealth. He’s […]
Are you jealous?
Here’s how I like to tell my story of church wandering, of moving from one kind of church to another—the way I’ve switched Christian traditions several times during my forty years. As a kid, my family was Roman Catholic. We were part of a lovely parish in Los Angeles. I have hazy memories of church […]
Gentleness born of wisdom
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” James asks in our reading for today. “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (James 3:13). A good life. That’s what we want for ourselves and for others. A life at peace with ourselves and our neighbors, near and far. […]
Mercy triumphs over judgement
We misrecognize. We get people wrong. We interpret the lives of others according to the ideas in our heads. We make evaluations based on our inventions of types of people. We make decisions on what a person is like according to our preconceptions, which are based on piecemeal experiences. We put one person in the […]
Eat my flesh
At this point in the story, Jesus has become a big deal. These verses we heard today are at the end of chapter 6, but we should remember how the chapter began—with that scene on the hillside, where crowds of people from the nearby villages gathered to see him, to hear him speak. After a […]
Jesus, the blood of God
Why is Jesus so weird? “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” he says. That seems nice. A pleasant metaphor! But he won’t leave it there, he has to go full cannibal. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” […]
Bread from heaven
This week the Bible passage are all about food again, just like last week. The central story this time is the miraculous provision of manna in the desert. God hears the complaints of the people, their growling stomachs, and sends bread. The Psalmist turns the memory into a prayer, a song, a hymn for the […]
Food in due season
The Bible passage we heard make me hungry. They’re all about food. Psalm 145:15, “We look to you, O God, and you give us food in due season.” In 2 Kings 4 we have a very short story about people having enough to eat during a famine: they share barely loaves and freshly harvested grain. […]
Woe to the shepherds
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:1) Jeremiah prophesies God’s condemnation of leaders who forsake their people, shepherds who neglect the flock. The leaders have consolidated their authority with terror, and have driven away the people with abusive power. They manipulate the needs of […]
Toward redemption
“This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people” (Ephesians 1:14). I remember those summers as a kid when the public library would have their reading challenge. If you read ten books, twenty books, I can’t remember the number, you’d get a voucher for a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. […]
Content with weaknesses
“I am content with weaknesses… for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). I have a lot of weaknesses. Spiritual, emotional, physical, relational. A very long list. And I’m sure I’ve got more of them than I know of, others that I haven’t noticed. The weakness on my mind this week […]
Steadfast mercy
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; God’s mercies never come to an end.” ~ Lamentations 3:22 I remember a crush I had one year in high school. I don’t think we were quite dating, per se. We never had a DTR, one of those conversations to “define the relationship.” But we were together […]
Words without knowledge
“Who is this who darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2) That line jumped off the page for me this week, after two months of not having to preach, and now having to stand here and have something to say. I heard the verse as a caution, that speaking, that saying things here […]
Covid 4: Easter
It was still dark when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. If you read the resurrection accounts in Matthew, Mark, or Luke you’ll hear that a group of women came at dawn, or just after the sun had risen. But in John’s account Mary goes to the tomb alone. And she goes when it still […]
Covid 3: Holy Week
Today’s gospel reading begins as Jesus arrives in a village near Jerusalem. He’s giving personal directions to two of his disciples. They should bring him an unknown person’s livestock, he says. Don’t worry, he’ll return them right away. Weird, but ok, teacher. The passage ends with the voice of the crowd, as anonymous as the […]
Covid 2: We wait
Our passage from Ezekiel opens with a vision, where the prophet is standing in the middle of a valley.He’s in the valley of the shadow of death, that place we heard about last week in Psalm 23. Here, in this vision, God takes Ezekiel to a place of despair, where it looks like all hope […]
Covid 1: With me
The prophet Samuel has gone through a lot at this point in the story. If we rewind a bit, he first told the people that a king would be a bad idea. They didn’t need a king, he said. A king would abuse power. But they got a king anyway, and Samuel anointed him—that was […]