Our ‘ministry’ is Word and Sacrament —everything else flows from that. We see a need, we fill it. We fuck up, we say sorry. We ask for grace and prayers when we need them (a lot). Jesus shows up for u...
On some level, although we can’t handle the pain of acknowledging it, Good Friday happens every day.
Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus’s lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside, blessing all the accidental saints in this world, especially those who that world — like o...
Jesus could have hung out in the high-end religious scene of his day, but instead he scoffed at all that, choosing instead to laugh at the powerful, befriend whores, kiss sinners, and eat with all th...
Jesus brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one and populated by the unclean and always found in the unexpected. I'd expected to look at the past and see only mistakes that I'd moved on from, to see...
It doesn't feel very difficult to draw a direct line between the messages many of us received from the church and the harm we've experienced in our bodies and spirits as a result. So my argument in th...
In the end, the only real love in the world is found when you let yourself be truly known.
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I asked my congregation. There was passion in their replies, and none of it had to do with how much they appreciate their preacher being such an amazing role model for t...
I told them that when I heard Billy was bright, an artist and musician, and when I heard that he loved his family and loved people through difficulty in relationships, and when I heard that he struggl...
I don’t think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don’t think it has to do with social revolution. Images of Mary remind us of God’s favor. Mary is what it looks...
God’s grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the plan...
But at the time I didn’t know that it would take more to escape black-and-white thinking than just no longer attending your parents’ church. The church had provided me a sorting system, which was now...
But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who follows Jesus the most closely can feel a little seductive, it’s simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me to be. I’m not...
As the social philosopher and mystic Simone Weil said, Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defiance of the devil, who surely hates the sound of it.
We actually have the authority to remind each other of the gospel and defy the darkness of living in a broken world by pointing to the light of Christ. We all need to have our bruised, papery hands...
There is a king in that text, but it’s Herod: a scheming, frightened, insecure troglodyte who puts a hit out on a toddler.
The thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.
Makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin.
There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics...