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Quit Thinking Like a Family? 

Scripture passages are at the end of this post. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”   There is so much material packed into this gospel reading, I don’t know where to start. This particular passage rarely appears on the church calendar. And I can see why. Biblical scholars caution preachers about the difficulty of this text. One observed that it is ‘rooted in…

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The Nightmare of Jury Duty Redux

Much has been written, discussed, and debated about jury selection for the New York trial of He Who Shall Not Be Named. Things have died down a bit since the actual trial began this week, but I’m still feeling empathy for those eighteen brave souls. In 2011, I posted “When the Jury is Judged” in the aftermath of the Casey Anthony trial. In 2013, I posted “The Nightmare of Jury Duty” after the…

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Three Rules of Interfaith Encounter

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Pluralism 101

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Holy Week, Foot Washing, and Human Trafficking

This was originally posted in 2015. I’ve made a few updates. I saw one of those fun quizzes on Facebook recently that I couldn’t resist:  “Which Saint Has Your Myers-Briggs Personality?”churchpop.com/2015/03/20/which-saint-has-your-myers-briggs-personality/ I got St. Catherine of Siena because, it said, “You absolutely love contemplating unity with Christ and the beauty of the Eucharist during…

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Blessed Are the Farmworkers of Half Moon Bay

If you tried to plan a day to contrast two extremes of power, I don’t think you could come up with anything better than what we’ve got today. In just a couple of hours, there will be four – count ‘em – four football teams that will begin either their final leg on their Super Bowl journey or their last stop. Even if you’re not a fan, with the 49ers in the mix, the games are hard to ignore. There’s…

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The "Wonder" of Advent

The “Wonder” of Advent

Sing verses 1 & 2 of “I Wonder as I Wander” I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,how Jesus the Savior did come for to diefor poor ordinary people like you and like I;I wonder as I wander, out under the sky. When Mary birthed Jesus, ’twas in a cow’s stallwith wise men and farmers and shepherd and all.but high from God’s heaven a star’s light did fall,and the promise of ages it did then…

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When I Asked

Here are some great words of wisdom by Todd Jenkins. If we really want to live into ‘and,’ we have to learn to listen.

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Jacob & the Angel: A Spirituality of Struggle

Jacob & the Angel: A Spirituality of Struggle

I’m not a fan of wrestling – neither amateur nor professional. Maybe you were on a high school or college wrestling team or you enjoy watching the competitions in the Summer Olympics. There’s nothing wrong with wrestling; I’m just not a fan. Although I do have hard time with the macho theatrics of professional wrestlers. So why would a story about wrestling be one of my favorite Bible…

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Hanging on to Easter: from "a flailing, dying parish"

Hanging on to Easter: from “a flailing, dying parish”

It has been a lovely, meaningful Holy Week. And I’m looking forward to a beautiful Easter Sunday. This in spite of being told that my church is not only a “flailing, dying parish,” but is also “in schism . . . quite possibly from the Christian faith in general.” Funny, being told that my faith isn’t Lutheran, let alone ‘Christian,’ since the center of every worship service is – well, Christ. I…

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How I Explained the Trinity in 9 Minutes

How I Explained the Trinity in 9 Minutes

See previous post. This is what I said. At the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City 2015, I was scheduled to present a workshop on Monday afternoon. On Sunday evening, I discovered that my workshop had been deleted from the Parliament app. Panicking, I ran down to the Parliament office in the Salt Palace, but it was Sunday evening; no one was there, except for one…

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Litany of Contradictory Things

Litany of Contradictory Things

After a conversation with a friend today, lamenting humanity’s seeming inability to move beyond either/or thinking, I went back to a prayer I found on a blog called prayerandverse. “Litany of Contradictory Things” is based on a prayer by the same name by Michael Moynahan, SJ in the book Hearts on Fire. Here is just part of the prayer – you’ll get the idea. Wheat and weeds:let them grow…

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Explaining God in 9 Minutes

Explaining God in 9 Minutes

How would you explain your understanding of God, the Divine, Higher Power, or however you understand that which is bigger than ourselves? Are you apophatic (the so-called ‘negative’ approach, which means emptying the mind of words and ideas about God) or cataphatic (the so-called ‘positive’ approach, that uses words, images, symbols, ideas for the Divine)? Are you a theist (for whom God refers…

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Living into 'And' in a Divided Church

Living into ‘And’ in a Divided Church

Sometimes it’s just too hard. Or to be honest, I just don’t want to. Living into ‘and’ is difficult enough in a politically and culturally fractured world is hard enough. But when a divide opens up in the church, it feels even more painful. Of course, the split in the Methodist Church is the big news these days. But there’s a division here in my corner of Luther World. In the ELCA (Evangelical…

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Spiritual Fluidity

I was very interested when I learned that the book club of my area’s interfaith organization was reading When One Religion Isn’t Enough: the Lives of Spiritually Fluid People by Duane R. Bidwell. I hadn’t heard of this book, even though it was published in 2018. But I was intrigued because in my book, The INTRAfaith Conversation, I have a chapter entitled “New Voices.” And one of those voices is…

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It's Not Either/Or

It’s Not Either/Or

It’s Not Either/Or It’s Both/And

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Teaching Civil Conversation - then Buffalo Happens

Teaching Civil Conversation – then Buffalo Happens

This past weekend, I led a retreat and preached at the Church of the Nativity in Buffalo, NY. After phone and Zoom conversations beforehand with the planning committee about what they wanted to get out of our time together, we decided the title for the weekend would be “Carrying Christ into a Divided World.” It all started with Pastor Ruth Snyder, who’s been my best friend since the days I served…