There’s a lot I don’t understand about this story—about Noah and the ark and the flood. I don’t understand the flood part—all the devastation, people and animals, trees and grass, swept away in a torrent of water: rivers turned into seas, lakes into oceans. This is a story about judgment, about human corruption of the […]
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Holy betrayal
Rahab betrays her people. She betrays the security of her nation. She helps two foreigners cross the walls into Jericho. She welcomes two immigrants, even though her people call them enemies, even though her country considers them as threats to society. She extends hospitality to strangers who sneak through the night, who climb a wall […]
Tangled beauty
Ruth is part of the royal line, the genealogy of king David. This is an important fact for Matthew’s Gospel—in the very first chapter of the story of Jesus, there’s Ruth, the mother of Obed, who is the father of Jesse, the father of David, the king of Israel. There is no David without Ruth, […]
Your people, my people
Women trying to survive, trying to survive in a man’s world—where men had the power, where women had nothing on their own. That’s the story of the book of Ruth—a story that, as we move through the chapters, narrows our focus onto two people, Naomi and Ruth, their commitment to each other, their love as […]
Embarrassing generosity
Last week, Isaac preached about the dangers of coveting—of wanting to dominate the earth and its people, of craving mastery, and of being drawn in to a competition for possessions. He argued that such covetous competition objectified people and rendered them thoughtless and voiceless. The antidote to coveting, he said, was love. Love necessarily involves […]
Coveting
I covet. I covet another world. Not this one. I covet. I covet another life. Not mine. We desire, we want, and we dream—we covet worlds not ours and lives different from our own. Yet the last commandment, the tenth, the culmination of all the others, says, “Thou shall not covet.” I break that commandment […]
Me too
Masculinity and violence are so closely tied we barely pause to question it. And if I am reading Jesus right here, the commandment “You shall not murder” is about this entire spectrum of violence.
Vigilance of wonder
Life is full of joy; life is full of heartache. The world overflows with wonder; the world overflows with anguish. There’s so much agony, and there’s so much love. It’s a whirlwind—this life. I’m sure you have your own desolations and ecstasies. I have my own, too. And this is what I wonder to myself—and […]
Princesita Gómez Gonzáles
Coming and going, leaving and arriving, exit and entrance. That’s the theme lying underneath our passages for today. That’s the theme permeating the verses we heard from Matthew and Exodus. Departures and arrivals—the movement of people. Follow the commandments, Jesus says in Matthew 5, so you can enter the kingdom of heaven—it’s all about a […]
I remember you
After teaching classes in prison for a while—classes about faith, about the bible, about theology—I asked the people who enrolled in my class what they wanted to learn about. Writing, they said. They wanted to figure out how to write better, because that’s what they did with their time, in those night hours, their sleepless […]
Disturbing the city
The young woman in the story we heard is a slave. Her life is a possession of a wealthy Roman family. Her body is owned by business partners. They have economic rights to her. They exercise dominion over her. They control her. She is nameless because she doesn’t need one. She is an object, a […]
Miracles
I’m guessing you’ve already heard this news—what happened this week, over the past several days. Twenty-five people were captured by ICE in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Durham—kidnapped by president Trump’s Gestapo-like federal agents who raid peoples neighborhoods, officers who invade homes, who come with guns and handcuffs, arresting our neighbors, without warning, without permission of […]
My
After the crucifixion, the disciples had heard the news from Mary Magdalene—that Jesus was alive. That was last week. In our passage for today, a week has passed, a week after Easter morning. A week since Mary saw Jesus outside the tomb. A week since she rushed back to the others to share the good […]
Let my people go, Set my people free
Early on Easter morning, before dawn, Mary Magdalene visits the tomb. She had seen Jesus crucified the day before. She was at the cross—there for his last breath, there when they pierced his side, there when they took him down, there when they carried his corpse away for burial. Mary has lived for far too […]
Original sin, original love
In the 1950s, a guy named Bill Bright came up with a roadmap for evangelism called, “The Four Spiritual Laws.” This statement of faith became a foundational document for North American evangelicalism. There are a lot of problems with it—and there are a lot of problems with Bill Bright, like that he was one of […]
Denying Jesus
There’s an old story—it’s probably a legend—about an evangelist who travels to Indiana, to farm country, to share the gospel, to convert people to Christianity. He meets a Mennonite at the general store. The evangelist says, “Sir, are you a Christian?” And the Mennonite responds, “I’m not the best person to answer that question. You […]
Spit and mud
“Everything happens for a reason.” That is the title of a book by Kate Bowler, a professor of history at Duke Divinity. Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) came out this week and I, like many others, heard her interviewed on NPR. I know that Kate happens to be a friend […]
Misunderstanding Jesus
This is a risky conversation, here at Jacob’s well in the land of Samaria: Jesus, a Jew, and this woman, a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans are kindred peoples, distant relatives, both tracing their lineage to Jacob, the patriarch of Israel. Samaritans and Jews are cousins, but they are not friends. There is tension between the […]
Fierce love
Jesus is a Jew, part of God’s people. And as a faithful Jew, he takes a trip to the temple in Jerusalem for Passover, the festival that remembers Israel slavery in Egypt, and God’s salvation, God’s liberation, freedom from the shackles of bondage, their forced labor, their economic exploitation. When he arrives in Jerusalem, walking […]
Unseen revelations
Last week we read the opening scene in John’s Gospel. A man named Philip found his friend, Nathanael, and told him about a rabbi, a new one who was passing through town, an itinerant rabbi. This was not unusual in first century Judaism—rabbis would emerge, their ministry gaining a following, then perhaps fizzle out. If […]
Consent
In the beginning the earth was without form. In the beginning the darkness roamed and did not hide. The darkness covered. The darkness ruled. In the beginning, there was no light. In the beginning hope was formed with a breath that declared, “Let there be.” And in response to her own voice the earth shifted and moved, and God said “Yes, this is good.”
Hope made flesh
This is the third week where the prophets have taken us to Israel in exile, the Jews in Babylon, God’s people surviving in the midst of their oppressors—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and now Daniel. In these Scriptures, the prophets offer words of survival, guidance on how to go on, now that they are forced to live as […]
Gardens
The Jeremiah writes a letter, a prophesy, to his people in exile, deported to Babylon, living among their enemies—a letter as guidance on how to survive. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles… ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce’ ” (Jeremiah […]
Unto Us: A Child
This week I listened to the radio while driving around on the highway, as I often do these days, sipping my coffee and seeing how long I can tolerate to drone of the regurgitated news cycle before I have to resort to more interesting podcasts, or give up all together for another episode of Two […]