Calling on the Saints
The day after I got out of jail back in 2007, the late Rev. Marian Bascom called me and asked me to lunch. I was worried. I had only been in Baltimore for a few years and our relationship was new. Though he had taken to calling me “young buck,” which I had interpreted as […]
Our Money Story – Restore
Every year at stewardship season, I lose sleep over the budget. I’ve tried not to, but I do, because every year for the past 7-8 we come up a little short which means I have to face telling committee chairs and staff to cut back and/or the Session takes a little more from our endowment […]
Our Money Story – Reimagine
The widow gives away everything she has – the model for pure generosity. Jesus lifts her up as the example to follow. That’s the way most of us have heard this text. But while Jesus might be impressed by her faithfulness, he’s not celebrating this moment. He’s pointing out how corrupt the whole temple system […]
Our Money Story – Release
Like all money stories, my own was rooted in something much deeper than money. My grandparents lived through the depression. The grandparent who lived on a farm in SC knew real hunger, scarcity, and the fear that came from it. She made it her life’s goal to insulate herself and her children from it, by […]
Nineveh, Anger, and Us
Jonah is a prophet who does not want his job. Since we’re stepping in midstream, here is the quick version. He receives a direct command from God to preach to the Gentiles in Nineveh, and he refuses to go. He takes off on a ship going the opposite direction, gets caught in a storm at […]
We Are All the Same and Other White Lies
Messy Midwifery on the Way toward Justice
Everybody needs a good hero. People who rise to the historical moment. People who say and do the right things when the pressure is on and the right things aren’t easy. People to look up to. So it’s disappointing to discover that few change-agents in history were consistently right in their values or ideology. Ibram […]
The God Who Listens
It’s hard to believe that Jesus – our model for inclusion – actually compares this Canaanite woman and her child to dogs. -Calls them dogs because they are not part of his religious/ethnic group. We can do what we can to make the best of Jesus’ insult – Maybe he was tired from his 40 […]
Name Calling
We watched the horror movie, “Alien,” while on vacation this week. To understand how I got two teenagers to watch a 1979 classic starring Sigourney Weaver with 1979-quality special effects, you only have to know that the 2018 Marvel Movie, Avengers: Infinity War makes reference to it early in the film. That was […]
Blessed and Stressed
The chickens have come home to roost for Jacob. Having tricked his father out of the blessing that belongs to his older brother, aided by the shrewd assistance of his mother, Jacob finds himself blessed and therefore stressed, not the equation we normally celebrate, but the more common one we find in the […]