Word From Below
Scandal
The real threat that Jesus exposes in this text is the hidden envy brewing in the disciples’ hearts.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Meditations on (Un) Cleanliness
Undermining Jesus’s call to love.
By Stephanie Dunlap
Word From Below
Induction to Reality
Remembering the body of Christ for a hurting world.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Dismantling and Re-framing Family
A new frame for the family portrait.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
The Paraclete Comes to Guatemala City
Tragedy in the Street Psalms community.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Sent How?
Is Matthew 28:19-20 the “Great Commission? Is it the text that should guide how we understand God’s mission? Could it be that the near canonization of the term has actually caused damage to our understanding of the Christian mission?
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Make Yourselves At Home
The more closely we examine Jesus’s words in John 15 – among the last words he would speak before his death – the more it seems an awkward mix of metaphors. On the one hand, he uses as the key verb “abide,” which sounds to our ears almost transcendental, serene, relinquished. Something that could happen most comfortably on a couch.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Intimacy
The story of God in the world, because it is a love story, moves ever toward intimacy, toward oneness.
As with all love stories, obstacles abound – comical and tragic misunderstandings, turnings away, outright betrayals, and faltering reaches toward the other.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
The Kiss of God
A few years ago I was sharing about my own experience of the risen Christ. I was speaking in parables and one young man urged me to “explain” myself more clearly. I was tempted to try. And then, in a flash of inspiration (sometimes my “inspirations” go terribly wrong), I paused for a moment and asked if he was married.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Easter: My Redeemer Lives!
We made it!! For us as a community following Jesus, this Easter declaration by Job in the midst of his intense suffering, pain, and loss is a fitting bridge from the season of Lent into the great light of resurrection.
We began the Lenten journey over six weeks ago and have persevered through a long, arduous journey toward and through the cross.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Holy Saturday: “As Secure as You Know How”
How often I find myself living like the Pharisees, not able to rest in the holy silence of Saturday, not allowing it to simply be what it is.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Good Friday – God With Us, Alone
I have loved ones in hard places, and the hardest place of all may be the place of abandonment.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Coming Home
This Sunday is Palm Sunday, when Jesus makes what some Christians refer to as his “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey. Crowds cheered and hailed him. “Hosanna!”
So there’s Jesus, fully human and fully divine – but he couldn’t have felt all that triumphant. He knew well to distrust fickle crowds, and he probably knew that in this very crowd were the same faithful who would crucify him five days later.
By Stephanie Dunlap
Word From Below
The Sweetness of Death
“… if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Jesus utters these words in anticipation of his own death – and Sugar’s.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
The Lightest Touch, The Touch of Light
Glancing back, I saw my father slowly slide his belt from his trousers. He folded it in half. His face was ashen; I turned away. I tried in vain to relax my buttocks – rumored among friends to make it not hurt so bad.
I wouldn’t know. I’d never gotten the belt before,
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Temple Cleansing or Temple Closing?
Jesus did not “cleanse the temple.” Sadly, most Bibles add this heading to the story. It is misleading.
Rather, Jesus closes it down! Better yet, he creates a new temple in its place – an abode of mercy that is himself. This is the heart of the Gospel!
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Suffering and Love
To live is to suffer, Gautama Buddha taught. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
Raise your hand if by some chance your life experience has taught you otherwise. Maybe you are an extraordinarily fortunate child reading above your grade level here. Even then, I might prompt you to think again upon your few years.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Bread, Temple, and Crown: a Lenten Invitation
This week we celebrated 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 cross. At Street Psalms we are grateful for this annual pilgrimage that awakens our individual and collective hearts to our own true desire.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
A Dazzling Secret
There is nothing quite so dangerous as trying to occupy the place of resurrection glory prematurely or falsely.
Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples not to mention his identity too soon. Theologians often refer to this as the “messianic secret.”
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Don’t Tell
Anthropologist Rene Girard and theologian Walter Wink have written extensively on how crowds are highly unstable and volatile socio-spiritual realities. They are more than the sum of their parts. They are easily moved, especially towards violence. This is why at every turn throughout the Gospels Jesus refuses to be the puppet of the crowd’s desire, which can one day shout “Hosanna, Hosanna,” and the next “Crucify him, crucify him.”
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Leaving Our Nets
This week we read of four fisherman Jesus encounters while strolling along the shores of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 1:14-20). We don’t know if these hardworking fishing professionals have ever even heard an actual sermon from Jesus. It seems that Jesus’s preaching in Galilee was finished prior to this encounter on the shore.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Holy Everything
This week’s text is a reference to the story of “Jacob’s Ladder” in the Old Testament and the radical implications of the Incarnation.
Remember Jacob’s Ladder? Jacob stole his brother’s birthright and fled into the desert. Eventually he stopped running and fell asleep, exhausted. The heavens opened and he saw angels ascending and descending on the place he occupied. Celtic spirituality calls this sort of thing a “thin place…”
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Baptismal Blessing
We are familiar with the red-letter Bibles that highlight the words of Jesus. I’d like to see a blue letter edition that highlights the words of the Father. It wouldn’t take much ink. We only hear the voice of God the Father four times in the New Testament. In each case it is the voice of blessing. The Father’s economy of words serves only to magnify their meaning.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
The Word Without A Word
About a hundred years ago the poet T.S. Eliot produced, some would argue, his best and most influential work. It was before his conversion to Christianity. Physical ailments, an uneven academic career, and a tortured marriage left him in a frame of mind that produced “Waste Land” – 76 memorably bleak lines such as “April is the cruelest month.”
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
To Hope and To Wait
In the Spanish language the verb esperar means both “to hope” and “to wait.” It is a beautiful Advent verb.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Let It Be
She reminds us that transformation is not something that we can either will or work into existence – ever.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Advent Hope
It’s the third week of Advent and soon the “Word will become flesh.” We will hear the voice of an angel announce “peace on earth.” But let’s be clear, the pathway to peace is paved by the disruptive voice of the prophet.
Again this week we hear the voice of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
BEEP BEEP BEEP Arggg
In Mark we get a smelly guy yelling – dressed like a nutcase. Right from the opening verses.
“Repent!” Literally, “get a different mind!” Wake up! Rub the sleep boogers out of your eyes. Splash some water if that’s what it takes. Brew a strong cup. Yes this is going to be good, and you’re going to miss it in the state you’re in.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Awake For What?
How much and how many can we care about before our hearts grow sleepy? There is so much to be aware of that things can dull to a low hum. It’s a struggle to stay present. Addictions large and small help take the edge off, keeping us drowsy.
By Stephanie Dunlap
Word From Below
Deficiencies
And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow…
some seeds fell on the path…
rocky ground… thorns… good soil.
(Matt. 13:1-9)
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
My Well-Fitting Yoke
Your fully human self will suit you just fine, Jesus’ story says. Check in the mirror, you’ll see!
By Scott Dewey
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