Matthew 1:18-25 It’s probably wrong that when I read this particular Advent passage, the one where an angel of the Lord dream-‘splained the “situation” with Mary to Joseph, that I think of a Sam Kinison joke. The Pentecostal preacher-turned-comedian’s punchline sums up what Joseph may have been thinking, muttering to himself, looking at little Jesus,…
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One of the treasures that E.O. Wilson bestowed on his undergraduates was the concept of the umwelt. Umwelt: the world as a particular animal experiences it. On a sensory level – visual acuity, hearing, smell – and the semiotics of what sensory stimuli signify in the instinctual context forged by genetics and learning. As one…
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“I am not interested in what I believe. I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes.” ― Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir Stanley Hauerwas often insists on pointing out that the reason doctrine— that is, speaking Christian— is critical to Christians in a…
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“We’re living on borrowed time.” The church I serve is like most churches in the United States in that we have an aging infrastructure that requires more maintenance and repairs each year. The HVAC system we have was designed for a usage period of 50 years. We are in year 60. We are truly living…
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“Church growth strategies are the death gurgle of a church that has lost its way.” — Stanley Hauerwas Last Sunday, I had the chance to drop in on a vibrant local church in the town I was visiting. It wasn’t a megachurch, but it was a church that had fully integrated the megachurch best…
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“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…” St. Paul writes a good 3 decades before St. Luke sets down to write the Christmas story. The trees and decorations this time of year, the…
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I was a young and naive pastor. In fact I still am. But at the time it was worse than it is now. I decided to dedicate a sermon series to doubt and encouraged the congregation, anonymously, to submit anything they were wrestling with regarding their faith. The idea was to compile the doubts and…
Read MoreMany of us were culturally indoctrinated into the Military-Industrial-Complex ideology, not by reading some political manifesto but by playing with rudimentary military action figures. By the 1960s, Marx sold enemy soldier figures little boys could use when performing their play war games. How many of you combined those little green soldiers with a bevy of…
Read More“Isaiah does not say that “a” virgin or young woman will bear a child. Isaiah says “the” young woman will bear a child (Isaiah 7:10-16). “The” is a definite article indicating that not anyone would give birth and still be a virgin, but someone in particular would be a virgin mother. We did not know…
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We find ourselves in the midst of the adventure of war. It began as soon as the turkey carcass was picked clean and turned into broth many turned away from the Thanksgiving table and towards the bright lights of Christmas. Water dripped from the plates now resting in the drying rack as many found themselves…
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