Sitting on the sidelines and calling potshots might be safe, but it can also keep unjust people or systems in power.
Eastern Airlines and the Lost Cause
No, It’s Not Going to Get Better
Sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is an oncoming train.
Beyond Soto Voce
If there is one thing I want to do more of in 2018 is get back to blogging about religion again. I spent a lot of the past year just not saying much. I can look at my blog and see a large number of drafts that never went anywhere. There are a lot of... Continue Reading →
Loving Jesus, Hating Church?
I gave up church because I can no longer make the trade-offs between worship, theology, mission, and community that I have made for years. My congregational options usually seem to consist of historically Black church settings with prophetic preaching and action on issues of racial and social justice, but that reject women’s call to pastoral... Continue Reading →
Awesome God
This past Sunday, the text in the Narrative Lectionary was the Binding of Issac found in Genesis 22. It is one of the most disturbing pieces of Scripture that there is in the Bible. Having a father ready to sacrifice his son has to rank up there as most horrific thing about the Bible. As... Continue Reading →
Me and the General Lee
The leaders of the Civil War shouldn’t be honored, but they should be remembered.
Sermon: The Far Side
Genesis 21:1-8 and 22:1-14 Fifthteenth Sunday of Pentecost A New Thing Series First Christian Church Mahtomedi, MN Listen to the sermon. When I was in college, I read the comics daily. One of the comics that I loved to follow was the Far Side, a one panel comic that ran from 1980 to 1995. What... Continue Reading →
Sermon: SyrophonecianLivesMatter
The following was preached in 2015. Mark 7:24-37 Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost September 5, 2015 First Christian Church Mahtomedi, MN Listen to the sermon. When I was in high school I was cross country for two years. I enjoyed running, but I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world. I was less a gazelle than... Continue Reading →
Sermon: How Many Lights Do You See?
Acts 2:37-42 Tenth Sunday After Pentecost Sacraments Series August 13, 2017 First Christian Church Mahtomedi, MN Listen to the sermon here. Good science fiction should be able to talk about a present issue dressed in futuristic garb. Star Trek has been able to do that for most of its 50 years of existence. There is... Continue Reading →
Eugene Peterson and the Age of Shibboleths
I don't know when it happened, but I've become a walking, talking shibboleth. A shibboleth is a word or custom that signifies who is in the ingroup and who is in the outgroup. Think of it as an old fashioned version of virtue signaling. Now, I didn't personally become a shibboleth, but the fact that... Continue Reading →
The Clockwork Pastor 