Learning from Mongrel Methodists

Two things happened in the last two days that have inspired this post.   First, a new friend and commenter here reminded me of Chuck Cook, a United Methodist pastor who is now a District Superintendent here in NC.    And second, since sharing that one of my new year’s resolutions is to attend a weekly mass [...]

Divine Abundance: Chapter Three, Who Will Be Saved?

If you are just tuning in you may want to read the previous chapters that I have written about:
The God Who Refuses To Be Alone
The Eros of God
In the third chapter of Willimon’s Who Will Be Saved? we are invited to imagine (in spite of ourselves) the majesty of God’s love for the entire cosmos.     [...]

Being and Witnessing: The Church

I love the Church.   By “Church” I mean the community that gathers around Word and Sacrament to not only be the people of God but, every bit as important,  be a witness to the God who makes them a people.   Both the being and the witnessing should never be thought of as the end game and [...]

New Year’s Resolutions

I am not usually a fan of New Year resolutions.   In my experience they do not last far beyond the hangover left from whatever beverage consumed that birthed them.  So this year I am doing something different.  I am being intentional about what I want 2009 to look like and I am thinking about it the day [...]

Merry Christmas

May you all come to know and experience your Daddy’s hug this Christmas

Why Does God Bother Searching?

Lately I have been debating the extravagance of God’s grace over at CRN.info.    I am learning much in the process, perhaps the biggest thing being that it is easier to talk about grace than it is to practice it.   Discussions such as these are a means of grace for me and make me even more hopeful that God will save everyone [...]

Christmas for Jesus

I learn a lot from my kids.   Their innocence and truthfulness often penetrates the walls I so easily construct. 
Early today Sophie, Eli and Maddox rode with me to McD’s to grab some nuggets and fries for lunch.   We started talking about Christmas…
Sophie:  Daddy, whose birthday is it?
Daddy:  Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.   We celebrate Jesus’ birthday [...]

Something About Mary

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Texts:  II Samuel 7:1-11; 16  and Luke 1:26-55
 
She wasn’t someone you would pick out of a crowd.  Just one face among many.  Ordinary.  Poor.  Young.   Just a girl waiting to be married with dreams of living a life of relative anonymity just like all the other girls she knew [...]

Mother Goose

Last night I was rewatching the NOOMA DVD titled She, and as is usually the case when I rewatch one of these films with a desire to grow (I feel the need to include that particular posture since I know many, many people who watch these videos or enter into some other type of spiritual discipline [...]

ALL

I am rereading chapter three of Who Will Be Saved?, titled “Divine Abundance,” and couldn’t resist typing out Willimon’s retelling of a sermon Karl Barth preached to the prisoners in his hometown.   I felt it worth sharing every word.    I hope it blesses you as it has me (again) and if you never had an [...]

The Eros of God

The first chapter may be found here:  The God Who Refuses to be Alone.
Chapter two of Willimon’s Who Will Be Saved? takes us head first into the sea of God’s love.   But this is not some vacuous, emotional, touchy-feely sort of love but a love with teeth.  It is a love worth dying for.
I confess [...]

Why Evangelize?

Over HERE I have been engaged in a fascinating discussion about the universal aspect of Christ’s saving work. I confess that I appear to be in the minority for right now but I have hope that this will change
This comment was made in the course of the discussion:
If people who never hear are [...]

Another diddy from Willimon

Eventually I will end up having the entire book quoted on this blog Go buy Who Will Be Saved?
I like what Willimon says here:
I know that Paul wrote, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord…you will be saved,” (Rom. 10) words meant to reassure anxious believers (I suppose) [...]

Surrendering to I AM

The
Closer
I get to you, Beloved,
The more I can see
It is just You and I all alone
In this
World.
I hear
A  knock at my door,
Who else could it be,
So I rush without brushing
My hair.
 
For too
Many nights
I have begged for Your
Return
 
And what
Is the use of vanity
At this late hour, at this divine season,
That has now come to my folded
Knees?
 
If [...]

God’s Judgment of our judgment

I am reviewing my notes for a theology final that I am about to take in 30 minutes.   These last few thoughts I felt were worth chewing over….
In this (the “this” is the atoning, victorious work of Christ who has swallowed up our “no” with God’s “yes”) a new modality of Jesus’ judgment arises.  Now [...]

The Universal Good News

 

The more I engage in conversations with people about the universal love God has for the world and his desire to redeem the world the more I find myself scratching my head at some of the objections that are raised or the assumptions leveled at people like myself.   Whether I am being told that I [...]

Without Brushing My Hair

I was introduced to this beautiful poem today.  It is by a 13th century Sufi poet,  Hafiz.   
Without Brushing My Hair

The
Closer
I get to you, Beloved,
The more I can see
It is just You and I all alone
In this
World.
I hear
A  knock at my door,
Who else could it be,
So I rush without brushing
My hair.
 
For too
Many nights
I have begged for Your
Return
 
And [...]

A word from Willimon and Barth

Below is a snippet from one of my favorite books by Bishop Willimon, Who Will Be Saved?
Barth believed that salvation is not the removal of the threat of judgment but the accentuation and fulfillment of divine judgment. Salvation is to be face-to-face with the loving God whom we have so grievously wronged, which begins to [...]

Doing Theology with The Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is one of my favorite shows.  I love the way they spin anything to get a laugh.  Many times the humor is poignant and profound.   Last night was a prime example.  Watch this video about Bush’s exit interview.  The segment that caught my attention in particular is at about the [...]

Advent Meditation: The Mountains Made Low

Isaiah 40:1-11 is the text for this Sunday, the second week of Advent, that I will be preaching from.
1 “Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
2 “Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
3 A voice [...]