For the next few weeks in this Easter season – I am planning to preach from the book of Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the New Testament, the last book in our Bible. Texts from Revelation very rarely come up in the cycle of the lectionary, the church calendar offers us a sampling […]
Revelation
God’s life with us
In the very first line of the book of Revelation, we learn that the author is in a prison colony—Patmos: a small, rugged island in the Aegean Sea. He is there as a prisoner of the Roman empire. He writes this vision as a letter to the churches back home—a theology for his friends and […]
With
Homemaking. The Christian life is a kind of homemaking. To make a home in this world, to make a life together, the routines and practices, the rituals and habits, where a people learn how to belong with one another—to find a home, not as property, not in a building, but instead with each other, a […]
The wounds of love
I spent four hours this week in the car with Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket, and Grandpa Joe. Leo and Julian listen to books on CD, and I recently burned an audio copy of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. How many of you have read that or seen one of the movie versions—raise your […]
Singing
Psalm 100 (VT #20), Psalm 47:1, 6-7 (VT #108), Isaiah 42:10-11 (VT #106), Revelation 7:9-12 (VT #110) I’m not very good at singing. You probably already knew that. I don’t really know how to read music, and I can’t stick with a part without help from others. So I just try to listen along, sometimes […]
The Adhan and Ma’an lil-Hayat
Revelation 5:13, “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing…” Psalm 30:4, “Sing praises to the Lord, O you faithful ones, and give thanks to God’s holy name.” Last week I stayed in a refugee camp in […]
Warmth of the saints
All Saints Sunday Jesus gets there too late. He gets to Lazarus too late. “Lord,” Mary says—this is Lazarus’s sister Mary—she says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32). If only Jesus got there in time, a week earlier, then he would have been able to lay his […]