Last Sunday, on World Communion Sunday – in his sermon – Jonathan Larson offered us a necklace of stories, a string of tales from scripture, Anabaptist history, and his own life – all examples of moments when the whisper of beloved community was heard, that as Hebrews said – “Jesus is not ashamed to call […]
Philippians
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 a few comments about the Lectionary, and do so again. Today it lists three scripture passages that are hard to ignore. Who can brush aside […]
Praying
Psalm 13 (VT #728), Psalm 46:10 (VT #730), Romans 8:26 (VT #729), Philippians 4:4-7 (VT #726) As you probably noticed, all of our Bible passages for today are taken from one page of our hymnal, all on the theme of prayer. I especially like the way they linked the last three scripture passages together, with […]
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 […]
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 […]