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 […]
Luke
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 […]
Son of Man, Sophia of God
No lyric has ever stopped a tank. No sermon has ever ended patriarchy, especially a sermon delivered by a man. But here we are, trying again, with some words about a few Scriptures—an invitation to live into new possibilities, a call for change. Because we are in need of reformation, we are in church always in need of reformation, to be renewed and restored. To be healed from the sexism that has plagued the church, that plagues our society, that infects our lives, our relationships.
Labor of incarnation
Part of the power of these pieces of devotional art, these pious images, is that they capture the shock of Christmas—that moment of revelation, the surprise of the story: that God becomes a child, vulnerable to the violences of this world, to the violences that threaten Mary day to day, as a young woman, pregnant out of wedlock, bearing the weight of oppression at the hands of the Roman occupation of her people. Whatever threatens Mary, threatens the life of Jesus, God in Mary’s flesh.
What then should we do?
We remember that first advent so that we can learn what to do now—to ask that same question running throughout the Gospel of Luke, “What then should we do?” To wonder what this gospel, this story, this advent of the Messiah, means for us today, as we live out our lives as a form of waiting, waiting for another kind of Advent, the coming of Christ’s peace: the renewal of creation, the restoration of God’s goodness.
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.”
Mercy
Leipzig Service for the Shenandoah Bach Festival: June 18, 2017 Jesus must have learned his prophetic ministry from his mother. She was the one who said, “The Lord has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” […]
He withdrew
Ascension Day What did Jesus want? In thinking about this scene from the end of Luke’s Gospel, the ascension of Jesus, I’m wondering if this is what he wanted. This departure, this exit. “Lifting up his hands,” it says, “he blessed them. While he blessed them, he withdrew and was carried into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51). […]
the burning within
“Stay with us” (Luke 24:32). That’s what Cleopas and the other disciple say to the stranger on the road—the stranger who they finally recognize as Jesus when he takes their bread, blesses it, breaks it, and feeds them in what appears to be a kind of Communion meal. Stay with us. It’s what we all […]
Mary, our theologian
“Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Her heart. We glimpse Mary’s heart in our Bible passage today. A glimmer of her inner life, of what she thinks about, of what will flash through her thoughts over the years, the thirty-three years, as her child grows from infant in […]
Nation against nations
Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. Dreadful portents. Signs from heaven. This part of the Bible, this passage from the Gospel of Luke, is called “the little apocalypse.” The word apocalypse means unveiling, uncovering, revelation, the truth exposed. The day after the election, in the neighborhood up the hill from our house, […]
Gratitude has made you well
“As Jesus entered a village, ten lepers approached him, keeping their distance” (Luke 17:12). These ten people aren’t even called people. They aren’t even acknowledged as human beings. They are called lepers. They are known as lepers. Their identity is leper. They are sick with a disease that made them outcasts. But, with Jesus, the […]
Life-giving debt
Mary Oliver’s poem, entitled Moments, makes me think of this week’s gospel text. Let me read it for us, and we’ll see what we can see: There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.Like, telling someone you love them.Or giving your money away, all of it.Your heart is beating, isn’t it?You’re not in chains, […]
The burden of care
When I looked over the scriptures for this week in preparation to preach, I found that the Exodus passage and the Luke passage presented an astonishing juxtaposition. The Exodus scene has God downright disgusted by the Israelites he led into the wilderness. The Israelites, perhaps out of impatience and boredom, created a golden calf to […]
Do not be afraid, little flock
12th Sunday after Pentecost This week’s texts are forward looking in different, if overlapping ways, and so I attempted to a certain extent to consider them together. In Genesis, Abram laments that he and Sarai remain childless together; he is unhappy with his present situation, and names his discontent before God. God promises a different […]
The Compassion of Christ
1 Kings 17:17-24Psalm 146Galatians 1:11-24Luke 7:11-17 I’m guessing Jesus could hear the funeral procession long before he saw it.Nothing compares to the primal soundof a mother who’s on her way to bury her child—something no parent should ever have to do.And this, her only child.Not only that—her only family,having already buried her husband.She’s a widow.And […]
Behold the beauty
In the middle of the prison I visit, at the center of the compound, between the housing units, there’s a vast lawn with concrete walkways running through it. The prisoners are not allowed to spend time out there, not allowed to enjoy the grass, the sun, the open space, but they do walk those paths […]
This terrible vulnerability
On the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the church typically hears scriptures and sermons about the Transfiguration, that occasion when Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus and some rather strange events occur. However, the CHMF worship calendar—in either a mistaken or inspired move—scheduled the readings for today to be those for […]
like a dove
Four years ago I was in a bad car accident. My body hurt all the time, for months. Muscle spasms, throbbing pain everywhere. I couldn’t think of anything but the pain. I remember one Sunday, here at church, I asked for prayer, because I was overwhelmed, and after we all closed our eyes, and as […]
He grew
Advent builds with expectation—and after four weeks of Advent, four weeks of anticipation, four weeks of waiting, there’s a celebration, the celebration of the birth date of Jesus, the excitement of Christmas day. The incarnation is special. There’s so much there to capture our imagination, so much mystery and beauty there, when God becomes human, […]
The bread of tears
Fourth Sunday of Advent A verse from our Psalm for today, this fourth Sunday of Advent: “You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure” (Ps 80:5). Tears flow like a stream through the pages of our Scriptures, sometimes turning into a river in books like […]
Unconventional Homemaking
This is my first advent preaching and I really wanted to talk about Mary, about how beautiful she is and how she’s joyfully, but humbly carrying God. I was going to make a bunch of poetic comments about the waters of her womb and the waters Isaiah talks about. I wanted desperately to avoid the […]