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 →

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 →

God Mend Thy Every Flaw

One of the ironic things about me is that two of my favorite holidays are civil and not religious: Independence Day and Thanksgiving.  In the circles that I run in, those two holidays are also the most fraught because of America's ....complex history when it comes to the treatment of African Americans and Native Americans.... Continue Reading →

The Trouble With Normal

One of my favorite cartoons growing up was the 1975 television special based on Maurice Sendak's books with songs by Carole King.  Really Rosie was the name of the special and the song that I remember the most is "Pierre, the Boy Who Doesn't Care." Pierre is a little boy that seems to go through... Continue Reading →

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