Christmas

Perhaps you came across a recent article titled “Jesus in the Rubble.” It features the picture above, illustrating Christmas in Bethlehem. Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of a Lutheran church in Bethlehem, placed Jesus in the rubble in recognition of the war in Gaza, just sixty miles away.

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From Back to Front

The Christian story begins at the end, at the resurrection. It is by the light of the resurrection that we begin to see what’s really happening. Until then, we are shrouded in what T.S. Eliot calls “hints and guesses.” It’s only when we see through the eyes of the risen Christ that we begin to make sense of Jesus’ life and our own.

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Resurrection Sunday: Easter Eyes

Today is Resurrection Sunday. He is risen! Creation in Christ continues! If Good Friday is the 6th day of the Creation and Holy Saturday is the 7th day of the Creation, then Resurrection Sunday is the 8th Day of Creation. Or perhaps the 1st day of New Creation. The point is that Easter is not the end of God’s work. It’s just the beginning!

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Holy Saturday: Sabbath Rest

Today is Holy Saturday. It remains the least understood of all the days and for good reason. According to the Jewish calendar, Saturday is the 7th day of the week – the day God enters his own sabbath rest. Today God’s power is perfected in weakness.

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Good Friday: Mission Accomplished

Today is Good Friday. According to the Jewish calendar, Friday is the 6th day of the week. It was on the 6th day that God breathed into the dust of the ground and created humanity. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is doing the work of his Father.

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Maundy Thursday: Preemptive Love

Today we remember a very strange meal. We call it the “Last Supper.” It is also the first communion. Jesus hosts the meal. He also takes the form of a servant. The host drops to his knees with a towel and basin, washing and blessing then feeding his beloved friends who will soon betray him. 

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Issue 016

“Wholehearted” by Kris Rocke

Each year, we choose a theme to reflect on together as a community. In 2023, our theme is wholeheartedness. This word came as a gift upon completing a series of personal retreats last year where I spent four weeks at different monasteries, listening.

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Issue 015

We’ve come to the final reflection in our series on synodality. We’ve spent the last year exploring how to become a synodal community who “walks together” across difference for the sake of the most vulnerable, discovering our shared humanity along the way.

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Issue 014

Our theme this year is synodality. Its root meaning is to “walk together.” We are learning how to become a synodal community who walks together across difference for the sake of the most vulnerable, discovering our shared humanity along the way.

Who knew that almost a year after we chose this theme several of us within the Street Psalms Community would walk together across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama? It was part of a vision trip hosted by our friends at the Empower Initiative, led by Ben McBride. It was the culminating experience of an intense three-day journey through the heart of the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States.

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Issue 013

Our theme this year is synodality. Its root meaning is to “walk together.” We are learning how to become a community who walks together across difference for the sake of the most vulnerable. Along the way, we are discovering our shared humanity.

Inevitably, when walking together we find ourselves at a crossroads. One wants to go left, and the other wants to go right. Division threatens the ranks.

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Burn the Ledger

Harry always insisted on buying the pizza.

He was one of six kids from the neighborhood who would gather each week for a Bible study to see if Scripture had anything to say to their lives.

Even though I knew his money wasn’t exactly honest,

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Issue 012

This year’s theme is synodality. It means “walking together” We are learning what it means to walk together across difference for the sake of the most vulnerable. In the end, we discover something we didn’t expect – our sameness. 

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Issue 011

Our theme this year is synodality. Its root meaning is to “walk together.” We are learning how to become a synodal community who walks together across difference for the sake of the most vulnerable, discovering our shared humanity along the way.

This month we are making the 17-mile trek from Jerusalem to Jericho.

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Issue 010

Our theme this year is synodality. Its root meaning is to “walk together.” We are learning how to become a synodal community who walks together across difference. We are discovering something we didn’t expect – our sameness.

This month we are going to walk on the lighter side of life.

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Issue 009

Our theme this year is synodality. Its root meaning is to “walk together.” We are learning how to become a synodal community who walks together across difference, discovering our sameness.

This month our journey takes a difficult turn. We are walking to Gehenna.

On March 8, 2017, 41 girls were burned alive at a government orphanage in Guatemala City. What was supposed to be a safe home for the girls turned out to be a place of unspeakable violence. It had long been rumored

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Issue 008

This month we join the disciples on their return trip to Galilee.

After the resurrection, an angelic guide tells the disciples that Jesus “is going ahead of them to Galilee” (Mark 16:8). It’s a curious detail. Why are the disciples being invited to walk back to Galilee?

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Issue 007

This month I want to share a story about a courageous soul who is growing my heart and expanding my vision of what’s possible. I write this with the full consent and the help of my friend Onics, who can now add “author” to his amazing resume.

On November 3, 2021, Onics landed at Seatac Airport. It was his first plane ride and it was a doozy: 25 hours from Nairobi to Seatac.

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Issue 006

In his book After Whiteness, Willie James Jennings suggests that the goal of theological formation is “belonging.” He adds “…and not  just any kind of belonging, but a profoundly creaturely belonging that performs the returning of the creature to the creator…”

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Issue 005

Not once in all of the resurrection narratives does the crucified risen one return with thunderbolts. The lynched and murdered one does not come back and rub our nose in the murderous mess we made. The resurrection accounts begin with some variation of, “Do not be afraid” and “Peace be with you.” The absence of vengeance is ginormous and demands attention. There’s not even the slightest hint of resentment. None! Zip! Zero! It’s hard to overstate how really, really weird this is.

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Notes from Underground – December 2021

Street Psalms is a “community of the Incarnation” and we will soon celebrate the mystery of Word made flesh. I have come to see this mystery not merely as an event that happened 2,000 years ago with the birth of Jesus, but an “infinite moment when everything happens.” And it’s happening now.  Word is always becoming flesh and dwelling among us, without hesitation. 

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Notes from Underground – November 2021

As I look back on it now,  I think I was undergoing what Thomas Merton called the “hidden wholeness” of reality. I was experiencing something big and spacious and life-giving. The distinction between “us” and “them” faded. In its place was a deep sense of connection, union, wholeness, belonging. 

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His Most Prized Possession

On the surface it seems perfectly obvious. Jesus tells a wealthy man to sell all he has and give it to the poor. When the rich man hears this he is “shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” It seems Jesus’ words also shocked the disciples too, who wondered, if this is the expectation, then “who can be saved?”

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Notes from Underground – October 2021

I’ve been stumbling around lately. More than usual. It’s like I’ve got a case of spiritual vertigo. All this stumbling around has got me thinking about the relationship between what Jesus calls “Skandalon” and “Gehenna” and what that means for this year’s theme  – contemplative action.

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Notes from Underground – September 2021

I was grateful for Street Psalms. Not because we are above our own potential train wreck, but because as a community modeled after the Incarnation, there are some built-in features that protect us from our worst selves. 

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Notes from Underground – August 2021

For many years I have kept a photo of Thérèse of Lisieux (1873 –1897) on my desk. On the back is a touched relic of Thérèse. It was given to me by Sister Wilma, a hermetic nun in New Jersey, who lives a life of solitude and prayer. She regularly prays for Street Psalms. It means a lot to me, especially because I know the place from which it comes. She has mapped the wild, untamed universe of the soul, which is no less challenging than the cities we serve.

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Notes from Underground – June 2021

Perhaps like me, you were taught that Creation was a one-time event that happened a long time ago. Jesus insists otherwise. Creation, it seems, is a current reality that is happening right now. In fact, Scripture invites us to imagine Creation itself as the womb of God giving birth to new life through the Spirit. The implications of this are huge!

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“Union?”

Before we got married, my wife had these words engraved on our wedding ring, “to our dream.” The first time I read them, I wasn’t sure how to respond. So, I just smiled and said something like, “how thoughtful.”

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Notes from Underground – May 2021

Virtually all of us have been taught to form identity in one way – “over and against” the other. This has been the dominant consciousness for most of history. It is the water in which we swim. It’s not easy to see it for what it is until we become land-born creatures with lungs, not gills. 

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The Good Shepherd

This week is Good Shepherd Sunday. Thank goodness, because I am feeling like a sheep in need of a good shepherd, and so are the communities we serve.

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Notes from Underground – April 2021

Hopkins is suggesting that Easter is not only an event that happened 2,000 years ago. It doesn’t sit in the background of our life, reminding us to behave like good boys and girls until Jesus returns. It is a present reality that is happening today.

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Notes from Underground – March 2021

This month we turn to Etty Hillesum for guidance. In my view, Etty was a 20th-century saint. She voluntarily went to Westerbork concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, to “share her people’s fate.” She was killed in Auschwitz in 1943 at 29 years old.

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Ash Wednesday: The Sound of the Genuine

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Christians worldwide will enter into a heightened time (40 days) of prayer, reflection, and spiritual companionship with Jesus to the Resurrection by…

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Notes from Underground – February 2021

Howard Thurman is a lesser-known figure of the Civil Rights movement, but his impact cannot be overstated. He was, by all accounts, a contemplative activist when there was hardly any language for that, especially in social justice circles.  

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Notes from Underground – January 2021

I’d like to introduce this year’s theme by sharing a metaphor from Alcoholics Anonymous. Fair warning – it’s a bit earthy, which is one of the things I love about AA.

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Anna The Prophet

At age 84 my aunt helped lead her aging church through a very challenging process around a divisive issue. She did so with remarkable skill and grace. She’s always looking toward the future, even if it does not include her.

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The Human Catechism

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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Changing the Metaphor

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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A Whisper

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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21st Century Pentecost

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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Oneing

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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The Verbness of Easter

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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The Judgement of God

In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.

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Desire is Viral

Faith, hope and love are the antidotes to social chaos. But let’s be honest, they take a bit longer to spread than fear and anxiety. That is why in times like these, as the body of Christ, we are invited to get clear about what we want and whose desires we are borrowing.

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Ash Wednesday: Desire

In the inner room we can finally stop acting. In the inner room we are free of the crowds who so easily rule and run us like puppets. In the inner room, we stop feeding on the unstable and fickle desires of others and learn to borrow our desires from the One who desires us.

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Team Jesus

It’s when we’ve done just about all we can do to screw things up and yet still discover ourselves loved, forgiven and trusted at our most untrustworthy worst, that the Spirit is fully unleashed.

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Forgive Them

By the light of being forgiven, we come to see what we are doing. The more we undergo forgiveness, the more we can tell ourselves the truth about the endless stream of scapegoats we produce.

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The Joy of All Desiring

We don’t know the specifics of her case, though I like to imagine her as the Rosa Parks of her community. What we know for sure is that she ultimately wears out the unjust judge with her demands. He grants her request, if only to get some rest. Unfortunately, this describes the experience of prayer for most of us. We feel like we have to work as hard the widow to get through to God.

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A Different Kind of Peace

At the meeting Ben asked the leaders if they still believed in the “tactic” of nonviolence. Before Ben could finish the question, Minnijean Brown interrupted energetically. She said to Ben, “Did you say tactic? If you think we used non-violence as a tactic, then you don’t understand our movement.

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Peace be with you

As if moved by this intuition, Thomas insists on a direct encounter with the risen Christ – one that will transform his own experience of pain. It’s not enough for Thomas to simply see the risen Christ. He must touch the wounds.

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Good Friday

It’s Good Friday. Jesus is on the cross. In the synoptic Gospels, the witnesses stand at a distance. But in today’s text, I can’t help but notice the women “standing near” the foot of the cross.

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Repent or Parish?

Imagine that you are the innocent victim of violence. Now imagine a preacher telling you that you must repent, or you will perish. Just exactly what is the victim of violence and oppression supposed to repent of? And at whose hands will we perish? God’s?

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The Womb of Mercy

My usually precise colleague aimlessly fiddled with his food, pondering the proper tone with which to broach a delicate matter. He was looking for words to express his concerns related to me openly talking about my poverty during times when I preached and taught. He’d rather me use other language than “I’m poor.”

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The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me

Yes, the whole world is a burning bush ablaze with God’s glory, if we can only see it, calling us to join the wildly liberating work of God among the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. If this isn’t cause for celebration, it’s probably because we don’t easily identify ourselves as poor, captive, blind or oppressed.

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Baptism

Baptism is an initiation into our most sacred vocation—to become fully human and know ourselves loved by God. No moral system, no matter how good, can produce this vocation. We become human, not through morality, but by receiving and giving mercy.

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The Magi and the Baptism

This week we celebrate Epiphany, and next week the baptism of Jesus. What do these events say to our souls? How is God’s love transforming us as we meditate on these events?

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Are You the King?

On the eve of a battle in the year 312, Constantine had a vision. He saw a cross in the sky and he heard God say, “By this, conquer!”

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Blind Bartimaeus

Beautiful questions yield beautiful answers. They open space for the Spirit to work, and involve us in our own transformation. Ultimately, they free us to see in new ways and act creatively. On the other hand, small questions yield small answers. The Japanese word “mu” can be understood to mean “un-ask the question.” Mu is the appropriate response when the question is too small fortruth to emerge. Throughout the Gospels Jesus is, in effect, saying “mu.” He is helping us find larger more beautiful questions, and he uses questions of his own to get us there.

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The Question

In the text we’re tackling this month, Jesus is accused of being “out of his mind”…and worse. The scribes accuse Jesus of being Beelzebul, a demon who casts out other demons. Jesus absorbs the deadly accusation and turns it into a teachable moment. That alone is worth a lifetime of reflection.

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No Greater Love

The ancient Greeks had four ways of talking about love. The highest, most idealized form was “agape,” which is divine love. It is the gold standard of love. The other forms of love were assumed to be lower, human or natural loves: “Storge” is the love of a parent. “Eros” is sexual or erotic love. “Phileo” is the love of a friend.

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Paradise in the Dust

If learning to read the Word from below is challenging and liberating to our faith in God, learning how to read the world from below is challenging and liberating to our faith in humanity.

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Union

To be one “as we are one.” Yes, this really is the heart of it! To become one. Union. Intimacy. The Gospel of Jesus opens us up to the possibility of becoming one in a way that seems utterly impossible – to enjoy unity without being in rivalry with anyone or anything. It is unity with and for everything – over and against nothing, not even death. This is the kind of unity that God enjoys and makes available to us. Impossible, but this is the promise of Jesus. This is Shalom.

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Christ’s Dark Humor

Dante had it right. The Gospel is ultimately a “divine comedy,” and Jesus is not afraid to play the fool.

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Good Friday

After dinner we walked to the vigil at the Plaza de la Constitucion in Guatemala City. When we arrived, the square was empty except for four women who stood around a lonely little fire at the center of the park. They were there to honor the memory of the 41 girls who were burned alive at a government orphanage on March 8, 2017 (March 8 is also International Women’s Day).

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The Dark Prayer of Palm Sunday

I have a confession. Palm Sunday is confusing. It functions more like a parable than a celebration and it leaves me conflicted. The crowd that shouts “Hosanna, Hosanna” this week shouts “Crucify Him, Crucify Him” next week.

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Alexamenos Worships a Donkey

It’s the second week of Lent and here we find Jesus teaching his disciples that, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (8:31).

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Exorcising bad Religion

Jesus does not shy away from conflict in Mark’s Gospel. He turns and faces what most of us flee. In particular, he faces the religious leaders, who maintain the system that sorts people into clean and unclean. This makes the religious authorities nervous.

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Awake and Celebrate

Awake and celebrate! Is there a more elemental invitation of the Gospel of Jesus? In this week’s text Jesus tells the story of ten bridesmaids and a wedding party. Five of the bridesmaids remain awake and join the celebration.

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Images is Everything

In this week’s text the religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus with a question about whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. But this isn’t really a question about taxes. It’s more sinister.

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Harry

The camp speaker joined us in our cabin and Harry was on the edge, struggling with Jesus again. Harry had been to camp many times and each time he’d said “yes” to Jesus. Each time he meant it. And each time he returned to his neighborhood where the peaceful clarity of summer camp gave way to the reality of violence that eventually swallowed him up.

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The Wheat And The Weeds

There is a harvest of love happening in cities everywhere, if we can only see it. It’s an unusual harvest to be sure — one that sees good where we often see evil and reveals evil where we often see good. This harvest is the unveiling of reality. It is the work of the Spirit and God’s delight. When this liberating pattern is at work in our lives we not only suffer the humiliating shock of seeing things as they really are, we also discover the unspeakable joy of having gotten it all wrong.

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Whispers in the Dark

Jesus whispers in the dark. As this week’s text suggests, it’s his preferred mode of communication. These covert conversations deal with the elemental essence of things; in that sense they are life-giving, world-changing and, yes, quite dangerous. The whispers are dangerous because they uncover secrets that have been “hidden since the foundations of the world” (Matt. 13:35). These secrets are killing us, which is why Jesus says, “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known”(v.26).

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The Crime Scene

Imagine the victim of a violent crime asks you to return to the scene of the crime-a crime that you were (in part) responsible for. Now imagine that this experience becomes the animating center of your life, which, despite your dread, fills you with great joy, and clothes you with a power that transforms you and the world. This is the miracle we celebrate in the final week of the Easter season as Jesus ascends into heaven.

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Open Our Eyes to the Stranger

Here at Street Psalms, our most transformative experiences have happened while walking the streets with urban leaders (“on the road”) and fellowship around a meal (“breaking of the bread”). This week’s lectionary text highlights both the road and the table as gateways to Gospel sight.

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From Back to Front

The Christian story begins at the end, at the resurrection. It is by the light of the resurrection that we begin to see what’s really happening. Until then, we are shrouded in what T.S. Eliot calls “hints and guesses.” It’s only when we see through the eyes of the risen Christ that we begin to make sense of Jesus’ life and our own.

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Maundy Thursday

It’s Maundy Thursday. We are entering the passion of Jesus by way of the love Jesus shows us today: a love that frees us to fail, desert, betray and still be called friends.

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The Judgement of Mercy

The story begins with the disciples speculating theologically on who is to blame for a certain man being born blind; they are convinced God is punishing him. Jesus refuses this interpretation and heals the blind man…an act that “divides” the unstable community; he robs them of their scapegoat. Blinded by their own dim judgment, and in an effort to preserve the status quo, the community “drives out” the healed man from their midst.

Jesus follows the exile to the margins where the two of them establish the possibility of a new community, one founded upon mercy, not the blind guide of sacrifice. This is the “judgment” for which Jesus came into the world-the judgment of mercy.

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Don’t Speak Until You’re Spoken To*

After the brightly lit meeting on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, where Jesus is transfigured, he orders the disciples not to say a word about this until after he…

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The Inauguration

We are told that the three most important words in real estate are: Location! Location! Location! I don’t think God got that memo when, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “The…

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The Word in the Temple

We’ve had a week to digest the Nativity Feast. The magic of Christmas finds its way into even the most resistant of souls because it comes so unobtrusively and with…

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The Word Revealed

  Joy is the purest form of gratitude, and gratitude is the most genuine gift we can give to God. The secret of our salvation lies in Jesus who is…

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The Word at Home

We began this year’s Advent series by exploring The Waiting Rooms of Christmas. We waited in the Apocalypse and peace found us. We waited in the Wilderness and a garden…

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The Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Prison

This year, during Advent, the Gospel of Matthew invites us to sit in what we are calling The Waiting Rooms of Christmas. In the first week of Advent we were…

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The Four Waiting Rooms of Christmas – Wilderness

This year during Advent the Gospel of Matthew invites us to sit in, what we are calling, The Waiting Rooms of Christmas: Apocalypse, Wilderness, Prison and Public Disgrace. These strange…

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Stone by Stone

This week’s text is difficult. It is the reminder that peacemaking is not for the faint of heart. The text begins on a positive note. “Some were speaking about the…

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Becoming Human

This week’s text is a difficult one. The disciples want Jesus to increase their faith, which is the very thing Jesus is eager to do. At first glance, however, Jesus…

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Not Even Abraham

This week’s text is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lives a life of plenty, while Lazarus lay at the threshold of his gate “covered…

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The Math of Mercy

Fifteen years ago this Sunday (9/11) something awful happened, and I do mean aw-full. Most of us were filled with awe. We let ourselves be awed by evil, and it…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 6

As we mentioned four weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead, we are inviting you to pray with us. (We will…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 5

As we mentioned four weeks ago, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead, we are inviting you to pray with us. (We will…

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Sabbath Prayer: Week 2

As we mentioned last week, each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead, we are inviting you to pray with us. (We will resume…

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Sabbath Prayer:  Week 1

Each summer we take a Sabbath break from the Word From Below reflections. Instead of writing on the Gospel lectionary text in the month of August, we will invite you…

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The Mystery of Mercy

We can manage moral purity from the “other side” of the road, but mercy “comes near” and gets involved in the mess of life.

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Mission: Transformed

By Michelle Garcia September-October 2012   ON A FLIGHT from New York City to Guatemala some years back, I met a woman from Oklahoma on her way to visit her…

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Family Matters

In this week’s text Jesus turns toward Jerusalem where he will confront the brutal reality of sin head on. On his way to the city that he loves, he takes…

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A Gospel Turning

The Gospel is alive and well, but there is an exodus from the Church in North America. My hunch is that it has something to do with the fact that,…

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Love in Motion

This week we celebrate the Trinity. Cynthia Bourgeault describes the Trinity as “love in motion.” Love in motion is the “inner big bang” of God that creates the “outer big…

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Pentecost Unity

This week we celebrate Pentecost, which some call the birthday of the church. The Spirit is “poured out” on all flesh, just as the prophet Joel had prophesied. This is…

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