Many of us were taught that if you do not fit inside the circle of the church’s behavioral codes, God is not pleased with you, so we whittled ourselves down to a shape that could fit those teachings,...
Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I've substitute...
Jesus was a real revolutionary and that Christianity had unfortunately given the guy a bad name.
It’s about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live.
It would seem that when we are sinned against, when someone else does us harm, we are in some way linked to that sin, connected to that mistreatment like a chain. And our anger, fear, or resentment do...
It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long a...
In ancient Greek, the root of means to throw apart. That which causes us to fracture, to become less whole, is demonic. ... I like to think that when Jesus sent the disciples to cast out demons in hi...
I may feel used to the idea that if I live a certain kind of life, I can make myself worthy of God. But what if God’s Word is so much more powerful than our ability to become worthy of God? I mean...
God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new.New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks lik...
To say Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy is to lay our hope in the redeeming work of the God of Easter as though our lives depended on it. Because they do. It means that we are an E...
The basement of a bar.
We have to hear again and again who God is for us and what God has done on our behalf. We must free each other from bondage through our confession and forgiveness.
So often in the church, being a pastor or a spiritual leader means being the example of godly living. A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuff — the person...
Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as the blessing — like so many mission trips to help those less fortunate than ourselves — can easily descend into a blend of benevolence and paternalism...
Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they’re nothi...
It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.
I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative...
I stood the next day in the copper light of sundown in the parish hall where House for All Sinners and Saints meets and confessed all of this to my congregation. I told them there had been a million r...
I can, however, talk endlessly about the way I’ve been thrown on my ass over and over by the Bible, the practices of the church, and the people of God. That is to say, by religion.
Like.