We bring the holy things of the church onto the holy streets of the city because on some level, the violence and despair of Good Friday is still a human reality. Unfortunately, we’ve never lacked an o...
That's the crazy thing about Christianity — the idea that the finite can contain the infinite. After all, what is the incarnation if not that? So there's an incredible physicality to the spiritual wit...
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...
Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from.
Our identity has nothing to do with how we are perceived by others. But it’s still tempting to believe. I mean, if Jesus was vulnerable to temptation, the rest of us certainly are, whether it be tempt...
I believe that God’s word of grace can also come through simple, imperfect everyday human love.
God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and dist...
Wish I could show them how their loyalty to a doctrine or an interpretation of a few Bible verses has created harm in the bodies and spirits of the people in my care.
Like.
What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never c...
Repentance in Greek means something much closer to thinking differently afterward than it does changing your cheating ways. Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it...
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...
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.
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.
What Mary would do is show up and remind us that despite the violence and fear, it’s still always worth it to love God and to love people. And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defian...
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.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.