Posts Tagged ‘Pentecost’
Good News in Hard Places
This week’s lectionary text is a familiar but difficult one.
For many of us, Matthew 25 recalls memories of sermons of the past — echoes of the sheep vs. the goats, cautionary tales about entertaining angels, or Jesus in disguise. There is an abundance of judgment for those seeking it, and we all find ourselves crossing our fingers, hoping to land on the King’s right side and avoid his left.
Read MoreThe Stories We Tell Ourselves
The parable of the talents has haunted me for a long time. It has frightened me since I was a teenager. I remember hearing the youth pastor preaching about this passage several times. Every time he brought this parable up, I felt uncomfortable.
Read MoreVigilance and Understanding
This parable draws parallels with the future kingdom of heaven, where the ten bridesmaids prepare to meet the groom. Ultimately, only half of them partake in the banquet, while the rest are denied access. This caution resonates with the preceding chapter, urging disciples to remain watchful and alert at all times (24:48, 42).
Read MoreA Malicious Question, A Healing Answer
I’ve heard it said that the Bible is “God’s Answer Book.” Some people must find that to be true, but it’s hard to see how. Among the Bibles I own, a few have sections in the back that serve as FAQs (frequently asked questions) plus answers. That’s handy, but they’re modern add-ons.
Read MoreWho’s on the Guest List?
As Jesus approached the cross in Jerusalem, not everyone grasped the significance. There were those religious leaders who were threatened by his increasing popularity among the masses and wanted to shut that down. AND there some who were awaiting a Jesus that would green-light a violent overthrow of Roman oppression and were hoping this was their time.
Read MoreA Way of Hearing
Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing. I wonder, however, if it’s also a way of hearing. Listening holds profound significance in our lives. The ear is the first organ to function within our mother’s womb and the last to stop working at our death.
Read More“Says Who?”
Our passage leaves out exactly what unauthorized things Jesus has been doing. If we back up, we see that this inquisition takes place the morning after Jesus has entered Jerusalem cheered on by a crowd.
Read MoreThe Lavish Landowner
When was the last time you read Scripture to know God more deeply? I know that sounds like an odd question, but for many, including myself, picking up the Bible is often more about uncovering practical life lessons or moral guidance, rather than seeking to connect with the Creator. For example, in this week’s parable of the landowner, it’s tempting to dissect it for lessons on jealousy, or fairness, or the enigmatic ways of God.
Read MoreForgiving Uncertainty
I really like to have the right answers. That’s why, when I started my theological studies many years ago, I struggled with my own inclinations toward legalism. Legalism was comfortable for me. It spared me from the complexities of life because it often provided straightforward responses grounded in phrases like, “because the Bible says so.” It took time for me to realize that a legalistic, literal interpretation of scripture wasn’t the sole way to read the Bible, and, in fact, it could stifle life’s beautiful complexity.
Read MoreStructured and Tight, but Open
Both my parents worked away from home all throughout my childhood years. As the eldest child, I was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after my siblings, which included ensuring they were fed.
Read MorePeace Be With You
The point is that when faced with the worst of what humans can do to one another, Jesus’ response is “Peace be with you.” He even shows them His wounds, choosing to expose his vulnerability instead of acting violently or retributively out of His woundedness.
Read MoreBread is Essential
There is a tendency with this passage to spiritualize it, to contrast the bread that is made of wheat, yeast, salt, and water with bread that is made of love, justice, peace, and hope. All of which sounds nice but can taste like so much air to a hungry person.
Read MoreServing Without Seeking the Crown
Jesus resists this temptation. He does not use the opportunity to advance himself. Jesus shows us what is at the heart of incarnational ministry: coming alongside those we serve and inviting them to participate in their own healing. We all have ego needs and I do too, and sometimes I confess that we have used the communities we serve to meet those needs.
Read MoreCan We Hear?
These stories, sometimes referred to as myths, don’t just shape how we see ourselves in the present moment, they also affect how we understand what is possible in the future.
Read MoreThe Unreasonable Work of Liberation
He must be possessed, they say. Because God’s logic looks like insanity to those of us who’ve become accustomed to the world’s logic. All this disruption, this chaos, must be demonic, they say.
Read MoreDo Not Pass Me By
When I woke up that morning I promised myself “never again.” My heart cannot sustain it. My body cannot sustain it. My soul cannot sustain it. This non-stop movement, constant going, day by day, this making a way.
Read MorePentecost
All around our communities, in myself, and in our churches, we continue to be held captive to this imperial dream — unity, control and stability through enforced uniformity. Here in the US, it is enshrined on Caesar’s coin: e pluribus unum. In a political culture riven by purity, heretics are exiled. Theology is too often a pitched, but ultimately Pyrrhic, battle to define the orthodox and win the favor of power. The story we tell this week, however, dreams a startlingly different dream.
Read MoreMore Than Charity
Identify with those who have nothing. Not in charity alone so as to be a helper of those without food, clothes, or who are imprisoned. Rather, identify with their humanity.…
Read MoreReal Talent?
For those of us who were raised in the United States, we have a tendency to read the Parable of the Talents through the lens of meritocracy—your reward is the…
Read MoreMad at the Maidens
This week’s text, The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, has often been used as a precautionary tale about who gets into heaven and who is left behind. It’s clear that…
Read MoreThe Shoulders of the People
They do not practice what they teach.They are unwilling to lift a finger.They love the seat of honour. Jesus’ criticism of his community’s religious leaders is, as usual, raw, unrestrained…
Read MoreThe Impossible Purity Tests
Last week I walked along Tacoma Avenue, and found myself passing Simone’s yellow tent on the grass right next to the street. Now that the October rain is here, and…
Read MoreThe Emperor’s Coin
My sister does this funny thing before she asks you for a favor. She says, “I’m going to ask you something, but I want you to know that it’s a…
Read MoreShould We Have a Dream?
I’m told there is no utility in my delusions yet I choose to imagine, envisioning a world of fellowship and joy. In this, my alternate global reality, wooden ships are ushered…
Read MoreEntering the Building
Recently, our church community gathered in the parking lot of the campus. Together, like many other congregations, we are reflecting deeply about what it means to enter the building again.…
Read MoreThe Corner of Delridge and Roxbury
Whenever I read the parable of the landowner and the day laborers, my mind often drifts to the day labor center that used to be in my community at the…
Read MoreThe Cancer of Unforgiveness
Cancer is something that scares us out of our minds, especially if our families have a history with it. In the last year I experienced a great deal of loss.…
Read MoreBinding and Loosening
We start Advent not with shepherds and angels and babies meek and mild. Instead we start with apocalyptic warnings. I don’t like it. I prefer the kids in animal and shepherd costumes—the cute Christmas. But we don’t always get what we want. Instead we start Advent with a passage that is full of images of floods, and people disappearing, and thieves.
Read MoreHuman Concerns
It is an odd image in this week’s text:, uprooting a tree (already challenging) and planting it into a body of water that is salty (impossible). But it is not surprising to talk of agriculture in terms of challenges, impossibilities, and indeed, as an act of faith. In downtown Montréal, Innovation Youth has been growing our expertise in urban agriculture for several years.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MorePersistence
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
Read MoreThe Transformation of God
Filipino Muslims are our closest siblings, yet we are divided by our differences and a lack of trust. We were not prepared to address this lurking and lingering issue. We walked, as it were, down the road Jesus describes in his parable, asking whether we would continue to affirm the ossified lines of our identities, or transcend that which divides us?
Read MoreWhat You Have
The desert isn’t just a site for prayer. It’s the wilderness. It’s not safe. It’s a place we’ve all been. This pandemic is as disorienting as any desert. Grief is a wilderness. Sometimes the desert just grows up around us for no apparent reason at all. Depression is like that. We have all been to the desert.
Read MoreChanging 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.
Read MoreAn Invitation to Imperfection
We start Advent not with shepherds and angels and babies meek and mild. Instead we start with apocalyptic warnings. I don’t like it. I prefer the kids in animal and shepherd costumes—the cute Christmas. But we don’t always get what we want. Instead we start Advent with a passage that is full of images of floods, and people disappearing, and thieves.
Read MoreThe Hospitable Iconoclast
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
Read MoreA 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.
Read More21st 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.
Read MoreForgive 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.
Read MoreSome Good News
Perhaps this is what we are to testify to … the third way Jesus himself incarnated. At the cross, God absorbed into God’s self, in the body of Christ, all violence. God absorbed it, and did not return it. God suffered violence for all time and for all situations.
Read MoreChewy Words
Just as the Sadducees in today’s Gospel refused to accept the realities of the resurrection, systems of privilege can be averse to the realities of those experiencing poverty, even while offering lofty banter on their behalf.
Read MoreHospitality Inverted
There is a parade of attention around the celebrity Jesus as he passes through Jericho. The eyes of the crowd are riveted in the desire to get a glimpse of the great miracle worker and social (not yet media) influencer.
Read MoreWho is More Right?
To not judge ourselves in comparison to others is extremely difficult. Sometimes, the only way we know we are “right” is when we judge and compare ourselves against others; our opinions, our strongly held views, our values. The binaries of “right-wrong”, “good-evil”, “us-them”, etc. define who we are.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreThe Salute of Grace
A children’s version of the story captures the triviality of the narrative – the last frame exclaims, “Don’t Forget to Thank Jesus.”In such simplified, moralistic versions of the story, the other nine lepers who don’t return to Jesus are vilified as ungrateful. However, we shouldn’t rush to cast judgment on them.
Read MoreLaboring in the Soil
It is an odd image in this week’s text:, uprooting a tree (already challenging) and planting it into a body of water that is salty (impossible). But it is not surprising to talk of agriculture in terms of challenges, impossibilities, and indeed, as an act of faith. In downtown Montréal, Innovation Youth has been growing our expertise in urban agriculture for several years.
Read MoreThe Divide
I imagine the rich man at the beginning of his day. He is a man about town, with pressing matters on his mind and very important people to meet. I am easily persuaded that someone like him has no time to volunteer with a local charity or dedicate himself to the protection of the less fortunate. But then we find Lazarus right outside his gate.
Read MoreJoin the Party
I’ve been around a few “lost” people in my life over the course of my ministry. How many times have I heard (and said), “Man, dude is lost.” And in that statement, I feel sad and hopeless, like I have come to my limits in what I am able to do or offer. It requires too much sometimes, going after the lost.
Read MoreAnd a Kid Shall Lead Them
He was among several promising students whose families fled violence and economic crisis in their homelands, only to find a different brand of violence and economic crisis in Camden, New Jersey, USA. For these students, survival involves a series of practices, routines, and procedures only understood by those who have indeed counted the cost of the perilous cavalcade north.
Read MoreGuests of Honor
It’s the Sabbath again and Jesus is being carefully watched as he goes to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee. He senses the angst in the hearts of those in attendance who are trying to maneuver into position nearest to the host. Jesus decides to expose those present at the dinner to the idolatry and rivalistic posturing of their internal ranking system by telling a pair of parables
Read MoreThe Canaanite Woman in Charlottesville?
In the second half of the Gospel reading, we hear the disconcerting story of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman. Interpretations abound as to the meaning of the story, but at face value it clearly wrestles with ethnicity, discrimination, and worth. By the end of the narrative, Jesus has declared the woman, an ancient ethnic enemy of his people, to be of “great faith.” A proclamation of the greatest honor in the New Testament, and one that is all the more surprising when we consider that Peter, one of his closest disciples, had just been declared “of little faith” a few verses earlier.
Read MoreEven the Muscle Dudes’ Knees were Shaking
Like Peter, like Edwaan, and like so many of us, there is a longing for belief out on life’s “danger waters” — those places removed from the placid nature of peace and plenty. Persecution, pain, and tragedy inspire deep longings, often taking the shape of foolhardy propositions such as Peter’s, “Save me in these dangerous waters or watch me die.”
Read MoreGiving up on Control
In this week’s text, the Rich Fool thinks he can control and manage his life into a state of blissful completion. His land has been productive, and he has more than he knows what to do with. All he needs is a strategy, and he’ll have it made. “I know! I’ll just build bigger barns! Then I can relax and I’ll be happy.”
Read MoreThe Vulnerability of Asking
We live in a fast food, speedy lube, online banking society. Reading today’s passage, it’s hard for many of us to see prayer outside of this cultural lens. “Ask and it will be given” seems like a loaded statement, filled with pie in the sky, cake on your plate, North American theology.
Read MoreWill One Thing
Jesus and the disciples are on the move. They enter a village and receive life-giving hospitality from two sisters in the intimacy of their home. Martha prepares the meal while Mary sits listening at the feet of Jesus. It is a beautiful scene that lasts but for two verses before Martha barges into the living room from the kitchen, upset that her sister has left her to do all the work by herself.
Read MoreHostility and Hospitality
Filipino Muslims are our closest siblings, yet we are divided by our differences and a lack of trust. We were not prepared to address this lurking and lingering issue. We walked, as it were, down the road Jesus describes in his parable, asking whether we would continue to affirm the ossified lines of our identities, or transcend that which divides us?
Read MoreBeing Sent, Being Received
All of these refugees are our sisters and brothers, daughters and sons of our loving God just like we are. They, too, are a part of the Body of Christ. Most of them, if not all, have probably been baptized, and by virtue of their baptism, they are sent – sometimes by direction, other times by desperation.
Read MoreLet the Dead Bury their Dead
True confession, the relationship with my brother was broken. It was a love and hate relationship that hurt both of us deeply. We wounded each other in ways that we may never realize. His sickness and death, however, just brought all of the wounds to the surface.
Read MoreThe Cost of Liberation
We see people in our cities struggling everyday with their own demons: mental health, substance abuse, homelessness and more. We know, however, that their healing and restoration will require some sort of sacrifice on the part of the community and of the individual.
Read MoreThe Right Word at the Right time
Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.” That’s odd to me. Up to this point, Jesus has already unloaded many things on to the disciples – a lot of important things. In fact, we know from 15:15, that Jesus had made everything known to them that the Father had made known to Him.
Read MoreCan Evil Drive Out Evil?
“I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
Read MoreNew Skin to Bear the World
“I am suffering, it really hurts. It has been unbelievably painful for me to be confronted with the enormous division that exists in Nicaragua between those of us who profess Christ. Supposedly we make up 41% of the population but we have not been able to find any unity of response in the face of the deep woundedness of our nation. Those who are reacting in an active manner in the middle of this crisis are judging negatively those who have chosen to remain in their churches praying and fasting and those who have chosen to pray are attacking those who are practicing active resistance. And then there are others who have simply decided not to express themselves nor respond in any way whatsoever.”
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreAs if They Were Gods
I can imagine a mingling of terror, fire, and joy within Rev. Henry Highland Garnet as he hobbled to the podium on a chilly February Sunday in 1865. There was certainly a sense of terror during the last months of the Civil War and its steadily climbing death toll of 620,000 souls. Garnet’s fire came from his drive to abolish the institution of slavery and its horrors. Joy must have overtaken him, considering he had been born into slavery not far from the podium from where he spoke. And now he stood as the first African American to deliver a speech within the United States Capitol.
Read MoreParadise 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.
Read MoreSheep or Goat?
God comes to us in what Mother Theresa called “the distressing disguise of the other,” in the face of the despised and rejected. That, in a nutshell, is the Gospel. It’s Word made flesh!
Read MoreThe Way of the Cross?
“Build that wall! Build that wall” “Go back to where you came from.” “Pack your bags! Pack your bags!” On the heels of a divisive and highly contested election season…
Read MoreStone 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…
Read MoreChildren of the Resurrection
The Gospel not only empowers us to see, but to see from a particular vantage point-through the unconstrained eyes of a child. It is an invitation to see from within…
Read MoreZacchaeus: A Wee Little Man Was He (Not)
This week’s Gospel text is a narrative some people grew up singing in Sunday School: “Zacchaeus was a wee, little man, and a wee, little man was he. He climbed…
Read MoreSuperhero Spandex
Superhero movies are all the rage recently. I’m sure there are a variety of reasons why…such as an affinity for spandex. A more likely reason might be the attraction of…
Read MoreFaith from Below
This is a familiar parable Jesus uses to teach us about the nature of prayer. The widow shows us what it looks like to persist in prayer: to keep praying,…
Read MoreBecoming 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…
Read MoreNot 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…
Read MoreThe Gospel Hustle
In my neighborhood, this would be called a hustle. I see it every day. This parable sounds like a contemporary situation — a person is about to get fired for…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreInvitation of Love
Throughout the course of life we often engage Scripture through the lens of present circumstance. In my case, the engagement with our text this week comes on the heels of…
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreFirst Say Peace
“First say, Peace to this house.”
Read MoreFamily 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…
Read MoreA 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,…
Read MoreClash of Crowds
A collision at the city gate!! A crowd of death is leaving the city while a crowd of life is entering – they collide at the city gate. The first…
Read MoreLove 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…
Read MoreAmong So Many
Jesus hosts a table at which there is always enough; in fact, more than enough. As if to underscore this point, the feeding of the 5,000 is recorded in all four Gospels. Aside from the Resurrection, it is the only miracle recorded in each Gospel (Matt. 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-15). Each Gospel recounts the miracle using the same highly liturgical structure – Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave.
Read MoreCome Away
This week our globally dispersed Street Psalms staff gathers to work and to rest through a retreat in the far upper left of the United States (that is, Hood Canal, WA).
As Jesus shows us in this week’s lectionary, even the most devoted disciples need to set boundaries for self-care.
Read MoreSit Back and Relax Into Grace
Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello said, “The shortest distance between a human and truth is a story.” Arguments rarely do anything but invest us more deeply into our little “truths.” We almost never see Jesus being sucked into a debate. Instead he tells stories and riddles that confuse and disorient his hearers. They are like time-release capsules that work on us from the inside-out.
Read MoreDismantling and Re-framing Family
Spend any time at all in communities challenged by poverty and violence, and you will encounter people who have spent formative stages of life without the blessing of family. Such hardships may be part of your own story, and you know the reality all too well.
For abandoned people – who may be found in any corner of society – the words of Jesus in Mark 3 can provide genuine comfort and hope. Jesus re-frames and re-constitutes “family” in such a way that it includes those formerly excluded.
Read MoreUnlikely Hero in a Familiar Parable?
I have loved ones crushed by the powers of the world and thrown out. They’re struggling. Sometimes they are faithful, sometimes not. Me too.
Read MoreThe Crushing Weight of Purity
Last week I “had the talk” with a group of young leaders in Romania, on the topic of “God and sex.” What was I thinking when I volunteered for that? While I’ve had countless informal conversations with these friends over the years on both subjects, it’s the first time we’ve tackled it formally in our leadership training.
Read MoreUn-Beautiful Questions
At Street Psalms we’ve grown to love “beautiful questions.” They provide doorways to freedom and life.
Unfortunately un-beautiful questions abound as well. These questions prove to be traps – luring us to small, confining spaces with doors that snap shut.
How very crucial to discern the difference!
Read MoreBuilders of Violence
The new comes – a marvel! But as we see the gospel story unfolding, the old will not go quietly.
Read MoreThe Scandal of Authority
A call girl’s facelift to “authority”.
Read MoreThe Last and the First
Math in the kingdom of heaven.
Read MoreForgiveness
The master releases the servant.
Read MoreBinding and Loosing
In this and similar passages, Jesus doesn’t weigh in on whether he falls in the strict or loose camp. As a rabbi he makes a far more profound move.
Read MoreA Change of Heart for Jesus?
A disturbing reply to a desperate woman.
Read MoreTheoretical Considerations of Walking on Water
Transformation begins when we do too.
Read MoreLavish For Whom?
The fourteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel tells of two lavish feasts, back to back.
Read MoreRiddles of Grace
“The shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story.”
Read MoreDazzled
Imagine that it’s 1633 and you are hearing for the first time that the sun does not revolve around the earth.
Read More