Wheat & Weeds
Either/or binaries help us make sense of life. Wheat & weeds. Good seeds and bad seeds. A landowner and his enemy. A barn where the wheat will be gathered into… and a fire, where the...
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The SoilHas audio
Jesus uses earthy images in pithy, pointed, sometimes confusing parables that both illuminate and obscure what the kingdom of God is like. Just in Matthew’s 13th chapter he speaks of soil and seeds and weeds...
Walking in WonderHas audio
Ben spent last week at Camp Friedenswald in Michigan, a Mennonite camp supported by our conference, where he was the camp pastor for the pre-junior week. Ben draws on his camp experience to reflect on...
Lord, when did we see you?
I was jaded and cynical about academics by the time I finished high school. So the year after graduation I found myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico with Service Adventure, a Mennonite Mission Network program, living...
What are we waiting for?
What are we waiting for? I sit in front of my glowing computer screen waiting and hoping that some word from God would be present in my heart and on my fingers as they type....
Students of the Living God
Good teachers take us from where we are, to a place we couldn’t even quite imagine before we began the journey of learning. Sometimes the choice to be a learner, to be a student, isn’t...
Many are called
This past week I was on a walk with my wife Alli in the dusk of early evening. We were catching up after a day of work. As we walked on a quiet sidewalk, there...
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...
Geography of Faith
The other week, as Alli and I were caravanning out here, I listened straight through to all nine episodes of the WYNC Studios podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.” They powered me through our first day driving,...
Sending
Numbers 6:24-26 (VT #826), Jeremiah 29:4-11 (VT #783), Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, 21 (VT #292), Matthew 28:16, 18-20 (VT #451) This is the last sermon in this series on what I’ve learned about...
Image of the Spirit
I wake up, I use the bathroom, I drink some coffee, I eat some food, I brush my teeth, I write emails, I drink more coffee, I use the bathroom again, I might go on...
Covid 3: Holy Week
Today’s gospel reading begins as Jesus arrives in a village near Jerusalem. He’s giving personal directions to two of his disciples. They should bring him an unknown person’s livestock, he says. Don’t worry, he’ll return...
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...
Epiphanies
The magi see signs in the night sky, celestial revelations, announcing that the long-awaited Jewish king, the Messiah, has been born, and they want to pay their respects. After traveling for months across the desert,...
Immanuel
This isn’t just the story of Christmas, just something we hear during this season, as we reflect on a few passages; but the story of the bible, the whole thing, is one long story of...
Resurrection
This past year I’ve had two friends ask me why I’m a Christian. These are two people with whom I share a similar vision for life, a vision for a good world. We have similar...
When did we see you?
Our Scriptures record a long discussion among the people of God, a back and forth over centuries, where one voice in the Bible is in conversation with another voice, one book speaking to another book,...
speechless
“And he was speechless” (Matt 22:12). That’s what the parable says about the man who was at the banquet without the right clothes, the man who didn’t have a wedding robe like everyone else at...
Frivolous God
This is a story about a frivolous God who doesn’t weigh costs and benefits. God instead makes decisions based on love. In the kingdom of heaven, the only law is generous love, all people as...
Radiance
Jesus must also know how entangled human life is with fear, how badly we would like to not be afraid, and how paralyzed we sometimes feel in the face of fear, the kind that makes...
Food
I remember reading a lot of political theology when I was in seminary—books all about the revolutionary Christian politics, very serious arguments, very important ideas. And what always struck me, what I wondered about, was...
On prayer
This prayer is about big things and little things, about good things and hard things, about human needs and desires and power, about daily food and money and borders. In other words, this prayer has...
To live by love
The story of Jesus is also our story. The Scriptures invite us to see ourselves through the light of these holy texts, these stories as revelations into who we are, insights into our lives. We...
Epiphanies
Today is called Epiphany, a day to focus on what happens after Advent and Christmas, when this one we’ve been expecting finally arrives. The word Epiphany means revelation, appearance, made known. So today is a...
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...
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...
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...
Deny yourself
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24). Self-denial. That’s what we do, as Christians. That’s who...
Keys, keys, keys
“I got them keys, keys, keys / I got them keys, keys, keys / I got them keys, keys, keys.” That’s DJ Khaled. He’s a rapper, kinda. And when I hear Jesus in our passage...