Questions for going deeper with the Scriptures for Monday, April 18th

The Monday of Holy Week
Mark 11:12-19 | Isaiah 56:7 | Jeremiah 7:1-15

The day after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is written around this peculiar encounter with a nonproductive fig tree.  Why does he curse this tree that bears no fruit?  It seems superfluous if we merely read verse 12-14.  Yet when connected to his encounter with the money changers in the Temple, we can see how the tree represents the Tempe, subverted, corrupted, dying changed from a place of God’s presence, to merely a place for business as usual.

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Blogging Towards Palm Sunday, April 17, 2011

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 | Philippians 2:1-11 | Matthew 21:1-11

“Who is this man?”  and “Who do you say that he is?” are the foundational questions that the story of Palm Sunday ask us.  We easily get distracted in our modern, scientific-based, empirically inspired culture.  We want to verify Jesus’ divinity, to prove that he rose from the dead, to demonstrate physically his resurrected existence among us in 2011?  Those questions are all valid.  Yet today’s texts seem focused more upon telling us why Jesus is a different king than what the people had expected.

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Blogging Towards April 10, 2011

Ezekiel 37:1-14 & John 11:1-45

Does faith in Jesus really change anything in life?  Is it just a crutch to help us get through the difficulties that we face?  Is it merely a metaphor that we invoke for hope?  Is his bodily resurrection a game-changer; transforming the very essence and structure of the universe?  No matter our answer as we wrestle with those deep questions, the essence of Christian faith is a living-in-the-tension between the hope of resurrection and the finality of death which is all to palatable and familiar to us in our lives.  Our faith is based upon resurrection, the idea of life overcoming death, light overwhelming darkness, the power of love and grace surprising the power of force and violence.  But what does that mean for us in our daily lives?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, April 3, 2011

John 9:1-41

This story of a healing encounter with Jesus is filled with irony.  Only the blind man is able to see Jesus.  And yet he recognizes him not first by sight but rather through hearing his voice.  Once healed, the community, that has known this man his whole life, cannot recognize one of their own.  The religious community, rather than celebrate this miraculous sign and wondrous man, wants to paint him as the bad-guy and the problem creator.  What would seem logical, isn't what happens.

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Would Anyone Hire Jesus?

Singles Men Unhireable as Evangelical Pastors

In a conversation with a merchant near the church I serve as pastor told me about a recent article in the New York Times [Single and Evangelical?  Good Luck Finding A Job].  The article basically asserts that single pastors, in particular male ones, in the evangelical church network are at the bottom of the hiring heap.  Single women would be too, but I assume that they're not included in the article because the author focused on communities that only ordain men.  They're usually not hired because their is an unspoken assumption that they're either predators, or gay, or something else.

Blogging Towards Sunday, March 27, 2010

John 4:5-42

How do we understand God's presence as Jesus and in Jesus in the world?  Is he still in the world?  Or is that presence over?  John begins his gospel with a remarkable introduction laced with irony:  Jesus is the word and yet the world did not know him or recognize him?  [John 1, v. 10 and 14].  Is this because Jesus isn't really who is said he was?  Or who his first followers claimed he was?  Or who we struggle to experience him as today in the midst of modern technologically filled and quantified life, in the shadow of the revolutions across the Middle East, the natural and man-created disasters in Japan and our continuing economic pain?  Is Jesus really with us?  And if so, what the deal?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, March 20th

Genesis 12:1-4 & John 3:1-17

What is faith?  Is it about God or is it about us?  In Genesis 12 we hear the foundational story of faith as being about a journey not the destination.  Abraham and Sarah set out on a risky journey, leaving behind the safety of their familiar and established social network and safety net in order to hope for something bigger, better and God-given.  Their story of faith is one of journeying, walking, adventuring.  For them, faith is not the memorization of doctrine, nor the confession of established tenants, but the open road of being challenged in terms of their expectations and preconceived ideas, the limits they put on what is a "good life" and what the passion and purpose that gives breath to their life is.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, March 13th

Matthew 4:1-11

This peculiar passage about Jesus occurs at the onset of his public speaking and presence.  It seems peculiar as there is no other encounter story in the gospel between Satan (the divider) and Jesus (the great uniter).  Is it a test?  Is it him beating the devil?  It is theological?; metaphorical?; historical?  And how does such a story apply to our lives?

Blogging Towards Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12 and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

I find that the hardest part of faith and living a life of faith is not the "believing" part, but more often the life in community part.  It's hard to strive to be faithful and to put into practice the teachings of Jesus when we feel like others we journey with aren't following through, being authentic or integrating faith into all of their lives.  In our current society it's often that those outside the church look and criticize a seemingly naive piety that is disconnected either from the way in which Christians actually live or the way in which the world is.  Ash Wednesday is a celebration of our call to faithful discipleship which is based first and foremost on the confrontation of our mortality - our limits as part of the human condition - and also our recognition of our sinfulness - that we often don't live out what we desire to, or that we stray from the life path of goodness, mutuality, justice-doing, community-building, spiritual awareness and God-centeredness that the Divine One longs for us.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, March 6

Exodus 24:12-18 & Matthew 17:1-19

Fear - Katy Perry - Westboro Baptist Church

My kids sing the song "Firework" by Katy Perry often these past weeks.  A current pop music hit, the words resonate with me as I reflect upon the scriptures proposed for this week:

Ruby Bridges: links

Last week I told the story of Ruby Bridges in my sermon on Isaiah 49:8-16 & Matthew 6:24-34, using this painting of Norman Rockwell as the bulletin cover.  Her remarkable story, poignant in terms of the paradoxical way in which our nation - in particular followers of Jesus - has dialoged about race, inclusion and community.  Hers is a story pregnant with possibility.  Her example still proclaims courageous and risky hope in a different future than what we see outside our doors when we leave in the morning.  Here are two videos that can lead you to know more about 6 year old Ruby as a societal and world-changer.


A short documentary clip



A video clip to the song "Ruby's Shoes" by Lori McKenna. [site]

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Blogging Towards Sunday, February 27

Isaiah 49:8-16 & Matthew 6:24-34

This week's gospel passage contains a familiar portion of the Sermon on the Mount.  You can't serve two masters: God and Mammon or wealth.  Jesus talks of trust and loyalty.  We in our day and our Western World think of the worries that plague us: to-do-lists, fears, possibilities, unresolved situations, difficult relationships, existential angst and anxiety.  Yet Jesus is talking to folks who were worried about putting food on the table each day, enough for the children or elders to get in order to survive, worried about shelter, not more square footage, but would they - could they - be safe from the elements.  They're different, and yet similar, even with all our wealth that separates us.  Our worries plague us, chase us.  They can become the elephant in the room, no matter what we think of, they're still there.  It's easy to forget the dissonance between the anxiety we live with and that which characterized ancient Palestine in the Roman Empire.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, February 20, 2011

Psalm 119:33-40, Matthew 5:13-20 & 33-48

I've been thinking the past days about the text and sermon from last week - the first part of these 6 sayings of Jesus in the overall text of 5:13-48.  How can Jesus - the one who says to love your enemies - be asking so much, what seems so judgmental, destructive, impossible, unrealistic, un-Jesus-like?  It seems so much easier - and comfortable - to explain it all away.  Jesus didn't mean it, because he knew it's impossible to live out these values.  Jesus was talking to individual people in his day and age, but in our context - our world today - it's just not realistic or pragmatic.  Jesus spoke to oppressed people - inhabitants of a world occupied by the Roman Imperial power - in order to empower them to rise up and throw off their oppressor nonviolently.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, February 13, 2011

Matthew 5:21-32

"If each of us could remember that we are all created in the image of God, then we would naturally want to love more."
- Dorothy Day

"How can religion cause so many wounds.... and yet be a balm of healing?"
 - Carol Howard-Merritt

What does it mean to follow Jesus?  That's the larger context of this difficult passage which contains 3 distinct yet related sayings.  Jesus is teaching in the way of the rabbis: "you've heard it said.... or the Torah says this....."  then adding a twist, his interpretation, "but I say to you..."  Each of the sayings starts with that rabbinical twist: verses 21, 27 & 31.  Jesus is talking about relationships.  He's talking in the larger context of the Beatitudes [Matthew 5:1-12]: a new worldview, a view of a new world to which we're invited to works towards and live in.  It subverts our expectations, turns our systems upside down, liberates our deepest hopes and dreams in a world of justice, peace and wholeness.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, February 6

Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus continues the Teaching on the Mount.  Begun with a proclamation of a new reality - the Kingdom of God birthed in the uttering of the Beatitudes, he continues teaching on what a new way of being in this new reality looks like.  He uses metaphor and story to say what you can't quite say in words, a hope, a feeling, a thought, a promise that defies syntax.  Salt.  Light.

Celebrating Black History Month

"God is Not A White Man"

I discovered this song and video today.  It's perfect for bringing a smile.

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Blogging Towards Sunday January 30, 2010

1 Corinthians 1:18-31 & Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed. That's what Jesus talks about in this week's gospel passage.  A blessing that isn't what we expect.  One that transforms our vision of what blessed means.  One that turns our world upside down, inviting us to see the world, each other, ourselves and God differently.  Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 talks about it in another way, what God is doing in the world (the Kingdom of God, or the Reign of God) is seemingly foolish to those we often consider wise, and yet this apparently foolish thing is anything but.  These scriptures, along with another one of the day Micah 6:1-8, point to what faith looks like when lived out and when we live into it.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, January 23, 2011

Matthew 4:12-23

A favorite author of mine, Madeleine L'Engle, writes, "We are all asked to do more than we can do.  Every hero and heroine of the Bible  does more than he would have thought it possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary."  Abraham is my favorite hero in the Bible.  Together with his wife they hear a call - literally hearing God's voice - to strike out, to leave home, what's familiar, what's routine, to discover something new.  They're not asked to volunteer.  They're called - told - to "go" [Genesis 12].

Today's passage is a similar experience - the call of the first disciples.  Jesus doesn't ask for volunteers.  He calls out to them, disturbing their workday, interrupting their routine, changing up the familiar.  What's interesting in the way that the story is told is that Simon, Andrew, James and John respond, leaving their familiar life (nets, boats, fish and all) immediately.  Something is irresistible about the authority of Jesus.  Something is unique about his voice, intoxicating in his call.  I wonder how often they regretted or questioned their response as the years went by?  How often was it unclear where they were going?  Did they really "get" what it means to be(come) a fisher of men and women?

Living into the Dream by Remembering It

Thursday night around our dinner table we had a discussion trying to introduce who Martin Luther King Jr. was to our 6 year old.  At school they'd talked about it a bit.  The class was working on memorizing a poem.  Yet it was when we started talking about how life was when Dr. King was alive - who could and couldn't marry each other, which multi-racial members of the circle of our family and friends wouldn't be alive - and how folks rode buses, ate in restaurants, and that some of our kids' teachers wouldn't be allowed to teach them in a school - it was in the midst of the litany of how things used to be that a light bulb sort of illuminated.  Our children - in particular most children in an OUSD school - are living that dream as reality wether they know it or not, wether they call it every day life, or are able to grasp that it hasn't always been that way, and/or that it isn't necessarily that way throughout our city, nation or around the world.  The challenge in the teachings of Dr. King, which reflect the hope and experiential truth of the words and person of Jesus of Nazareth, aren't done.  We don't have far to look to see that we still are a house divided by race, gender, orientation, class and political perspectives.  Here are two videos I've seen online that are meaningful for today's active celebration of that dream, living into it through active remembering.

Tuscon, Beliefs, Children & the Tongue

Like everyone, I've been thinking about, reading all around and pondering the violent rampage outside of a Safeway in Tucson this past week.  Action by a mentally ill individual.  Violent expression of fear.  Consequence of political vitriol.  Preventable.  Illogical.  Consequential.  In my thoughts I come back to what I do, who I speak, act, live out my perspective, articulate my worldview, treat my neighbor.

I heard a story of a teacher interacting with a student this week during a spelling exercise using the simple proper name O-B-A-M-A.  A 6/7 year old student, issued from a Christian faith believing family, responded "I want to kill Obama!"  What is that child hearing at home?  Such statement can't merely be planted by FOX or MSNBC.  They have to be heard, reheard, and claimed through family experience.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, January 16, 2010

1 Corinthians 1:1-9 
&  John 1:29-42

Getting Dusty

Sunday in the church I serve as pastor, we're having elections of new leaders - elders and deacons - for our community.  It's also the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Weekend, a three day weekend which is intended to remember what authentic paradigm-changing leadership is like, what it can do and what faithfulness to a radical vision often costs.


The lectionary scriptures for the day that I'm preaching on touch upon leadership and discipleship, a word that's increasingly just religious.  A disciple is a student who follows a master teacher.  In the ancient world such a student often times came to consider themselves the son of a new father (yes - it was a sexist society with primarily male metaphor).  Eventually this new son, would supplant the father, and become in turn the leader.  Yet the student would most often take the name of the master, passing on the tradition, leading through following.  That's what these scriptures are about.  

A Social Network Christmas

Continuing on the clever Christmas videos with post-modern and technological twists, I'm including another addition: A Social Network Christmas.

The Christmas Prophecy

Advent Video

Advent is my favorite time of the year, in large part because in church communities we read through sections of the prophets, in particular Isaiah.  I find it to be a deep spiritual time for me, a renewing of hope, an articulation of what the world is meant to be(come) and be about.  This year there have been numerous creative digital and electronic creations around Advent and Christmas.

Here's one I heard about through a French friend, a creative way to retell the prophetic poetry of Isaiah in and for our context today.

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The Digital Story of the Nativity

I've been sent links to this video by several friends this week.  An interesting take on a sometimes too familiar story.

Trader: the video.

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This one seemed appropriate to me in this season of Advent.

Blogging Towards Sunday, December 12, 2010

The 3rd Sunday of Advent: JOY

Isaiah 35:1-10 | Psalm 146:5-10 | Luke 1:47-55 | Matthew 11:2-11

Is Jesus for real? Do we really want him in Christmas?

This is my new favorite Christmas song this year, "There's Still My Joy"[VIDEO] : [lyrics] by the Indigo Girls.  I'm haunted by the repeated chorus line: "One tiny child can change the world.  One shining light can show the way."

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Blogging Towards Sunday, December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10 & Matthew 3:1-12

The Isaiah passages in the readings proposed for this Second Sunday in Advent grab me.  Filled with word pictures, I find my mind's eye inundated with possibilities, stimuli and connections.  The Stump of Jesse is contrasted with the wind of the Spirit.  This stump, symbol of the ancient royal line of David (Jesse was his father) is stumped, dead, finished after the Babylonian and Assyrian invasions of the 6th and 8th centuries BCE.  The once great line of wise God-fearing rulers is gone.  But a new leader is coming, blown by the wind, filled with the spirit, called to be a great leader who will rule with justice in particular in regards to the meek and the poor as opposed to rule in a partisan way blowing with the winds of propaganda, gain and public-opinion.  The stump is immobile, unwilling and unable to change, to adapt, to grow.  The Spirit, or wind (in Hebrew and Greek it's the same word) is fluid, active, transformative, inviting, moving all those that it comes into contact with.  And so this first half of this passage (1-5) is dominated with these two images: Stump & Wind.

CAPC Community Thanksgiving Meal Highlights

set the video to 480 p to get the best viewing.

Over 150 people helped us in our annual efforts to feed the hungry.

This year we served over 200 people thanks to all our partners!

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Blogging Towards the First Sunday of Advent

November 28, 2010

Isaiah 2:1-5  &  Matthew 24:36-44

This week's passages paint huge pictures of vivid images of an idyllic future and captures the ways in which I think we live between poles of anxiety and apathy in our modern, urban, globalized life.  Isaiah 2 is one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  If I had to choose 10 chapters from the whole Bible to keep, it would be one of them.  Yet it seems too good to be true.  Swords into plowshares?  A global multicultural, multiracial, multilingual community brought together by and for God?  My heart beat has picked up as a type this.  WOW!  Wouldn't that be.....beyond belief?  And yet I think that's often how we - and maybe I mean me - see it.  Beyond belief.  A pipe dream.  In between the anxiety of trying to keep a job, stay safe, take care of those we love and the apathy of being inundated by surrounding needs,  fears, uncertainties it just seems easier to put my trust into small, realizable things rather than in massive universal-transforming visions of hope.  Maybe that what Jesus is pointing to in Matthew 26: don't give up or into anxiety and apathy.  Stay awake.  Be watchful.  Be thoughtful.  Be ready.  

Blogging Towards Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 & John 6:24-35

Thanksgiving is a funny holiday.  Is it a religious one?, or historical?, political?, cultural? or nationalistic?  In our post-modern setting we view the original myth of the sharing between Pilgrims and Native-Americans through the lens of the hermeneutics of suspicion.  While not necessarily Christian in totality, it does harken back to the worldview that was primarily shared between those that framed and shaped what would become our national identity and metanarrative.

President George Washington made a proclamation in 1789 declaring the last Thursday of November to be a day of thanksgiving, echoed and transformed to the 4th Thursday by President Abraham Lincoln in his proclamation of 1863, the holiday has its roots in an experience and expression of gratitude.

This act of thanksgiving, recognizing that the gift of life as we have it originated outside our actions, beyond our power.  The only response to such as gift is gratitude, thanksgiving: an expression of "thank you" in our actions, relationships and being.  

Church: 

trying to meet the future 

by doing what we did in the past.

I watched a video on education reform making the rounds on Facebook this afternoon while doing some household chores.  It's a 20 minute clip of Sir Ken Robinson [personal site], a speaker and writer, advisor on education.  It's clever, insightful, concise and potentially disturbing.  He basically makes the point that the world is rapidly changing.  We don't know what life will be like in 30 years (when my kids will be active adults) let alone in 5 years.  And yet we continue to educate children in the same way that we have for over 100 years.  While keep trying to address the paradigms of the 21st century, seeking to educate our children so that they have a sense of cultural identity, so that we can pass on the cultural genes of our communities while being a part of the process of globalization, with strategies and expectations of the 19th century.  We are continually trying to meet the future by doing what we did in the past.

I'm including the video below.  I found it invigorating thinking about my own children and the near-epic struggle to ensure that that get a life-feeding education.  In my own work as pastor - a teacher alongside a community of faith - I wonder if we aren't doing the same thing. Do we do church in a way that was conceived for the context of the 19th and 20th centuries dominated by the transformational experiences of what we call the Reformation and the Enlightenment?  Maybe our churches have decreasing attendance and increasingly bored members because we are talking about faith in a way that doesn't resonate with our questions of today and the ways in which we process our wonderings about the meaning of life.  Church is focused around a sermon: a passive listening to an expert talk to you about something in an abstract way.  A format that seems to be the least sought after in the ways in which people live, work and communicate today.

If you're game to respond to this post, why do you find church incoherent, out-to-lunch or less than life-giving?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, November 21

Jeremiah 23:1-6 | Luke 22:33-43 | Colossians 1:11-20

What would you do if you were king (or queen) for a day?  It's what we dream of: be in charge, have that castle, the crown that implies power, prestige and authority.  Yet what would we do with such power?  We might want to change the world, heal the wrongs, bring justice, and maybe also do a little something for ourselves.  A favorite band of the 80s - the Thompson Twins - wrote a song about this.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, November 14, 2010

Isaiah 65:17-25 & Luke 21:5-19

The end of the world, or just as we've known it?

Two passages that paint wide and big visions of the world  the ways it is and the way God wants it to become.   Are they talking about the recreation of the world?  The end of the world?  Or the end of the world as we know it?

Seminary

We live in a hard time economically filled with many choices.  How can we make life better for ourselves, those we love and live with and our larger community.  That desire to serve others is one of the main forces that drives some folks to try seminary, believing that a connection between faith and daily life might be a vocational call.  As with all calls it's not exactly what we expect when we undertake the journey at the beginning.  I loved seminary - all three of them that I attended.  It was a challenging time, stretching my intellect, expanding my personal faith through the adventure of the integration of head-learning and heart-convictions, theo-speak and God-experience.  And yet what would have been more helpful that another Greek class, history class, or lecture would have been a basic business class, an Adobe Software Suite course, basic accounting, a marketing seminar and a season of community organizing.

We often think - or hope - that we can change the world through our service, example and commitment.  Oftentimes it's unfortunately the world that changes us when we are confronted with the loneliness, impossible vastness and relational triangulation of clergy work.  Yet each vocation has challenges, costs and benefits.  It's easy to second-guess what we've chosen, to fall prey to the all-too-easy-trap of suspecting that the grass is greener elsewhere.  What's harder is to enjoy where we are, laughing with the good and hard, celebrating the grey.  On twitter this week I stumbled across this humorously clever and wickedly sarcastic video someone made about seminary and the earnest hope we all share (wether in seminary or elsewhere) to go out and change the world.

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