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 captivity and on to Mount Sinai in a pillar of fire. In today’s scripture passage, from Exodus 19 and 20, God establishes a covenant with […]
Meghan Florian
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.
What love can do
I told Isaac after the service last week that a more fitting lyric for his sermon, in contrast to the Chance the Rapper line, “the praises go up/the blessings come down,” would have been a line from “Wait For It” from Hamilton: “Love doesn’t discriminate/between the sinners and the saints/it takes and it takes and […]
Alive
Second Sunday of Easter Last week, on Easter Sunday, Isaac talked about Mary, the first preacher, about Jesus’ noncoercive call, and about naming. I carried this message about the mother of our faith around with me this week as I thought about the message Mary brings to the disciples, about what happens next, when Jesus […]
Shepherds Who Shepherd
Today is “Reign of Christ” Sunday, a fact that feels both timely and unsettling. This Sunday comes around every year, one moment in the cycle of time Christians inhabit, before we circle back into Advent once again. But this year, today, the world looks different. This is neither the first nor the last time preachers […]
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 […]
Stand in Grace
Trinity Sunday – May 29, 2016 I’m preaching on the Romans text today, which feels a little weird, given the joyous embodiment of the gospel in the sermon the children preached together last week. Now here I am, setting out to talk about a passage on justification. Such a heavy word. Still, I hope that […]
Dancing in the Dust
Easter Sunday “For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” These words […]
Praise Her at the City Gates
Over the last ten years or so I’ve been unlearning the interpretation of Proverbs 31 that I grew up with, a reading that governed much of my adolescence and young adult life, as it does for so many girls in traditions that are concerned with raising godly women, ushering them into carefully defined and controlled […]
Uprooted and Sent
Seventh Sunday of Easter My favorite yoga pose is the tree pose. I love the experience of shifting my weight to one leg, finding a center, imagining my foot sending strong roots deep into the earth to hold me, as I raise my other foot, resting it against my calf muscle. I love to breathe […]
Reluctant Prophet
If you consider the length of the bible, or the Old Testament, or even just the prophetic books of the Old Testament, Jonah seems insignificant in comparison — both in the space he takes up, and the gravity of his actions. The book of Jonah is only 4 chapters long, which takes up a mere […]