From Glory to Glory
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition of iconography – supposedly one of the first icons that every monk-painter must paint at the start of their apprenticeship is the vision of the…
Book of the Bible: Exodus
A Call to Action
Prayer: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” In an earlier sermon I opened with…
Thirst for Freedom
The Israelites are thirsty and water is nowhere to be seen. This freedom journey out of Egypt into the wilderness has been the Lord’s idea, a trip where God…
Hunger for Freedom
Some of the prayers we know best are mealtime prayers. They are prayers which we may have learned as children and they are prayers simple enough to invite us to…
Fight for Freedom
Hands are amazing. They can do so many things. They’re delicate enough to sew tiny stitches with a needle or wipe away a kid’s tears yet strong enough to hoist…
Time for Freedom
Clearly, it’s time for freedom. It’s high time for freedom. The time’s up on injustice. It is time for freedom. After more than four hundred years in the bondage of…
God of our ancestors
In our passage from Exodus, when Moses talks with the burning bush, he asks the fire about its identity, about how to tell others about who this is, what kind…
No gods but God
This week, in the narrative lectionary, we journey into Exodus. In the early chapters of the book, through Moses, God liberates Israel from slavery in Egypt, leading them out of…
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…
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.