If you’re anything like me, you want so badly to believe that you’re standing on the right side of an issue, and on the right side of history, and on the right side of God—and most of the time you’re pretty sure you are—that you can quickly turn penultimate things into ultimate things and personal conversations into moral crusades, until suddenly you discover that you’ve turned a stranger or even a friend into an enemy. One of our problems is that we think in terms of binary categories: … [Read more...]
A Politics of Compassion: Kenosis
In my forthcoming book, I explore how, as people of faith, we are called to practice a politics of compassion in our broken world. What core commitments might inform how Christians respond to the most contentious issues of our day, such as health care, climate change, immigration, racism? How do we transcend the politics of division that dominates our divides our country? Is it possible that, despite our ideological differences, we can still find enough common ground to work together for the … [Read more...]
The Politics of Compassion: Kinship
With 91 days until the November 2020 Presidential Election, U.S. Americans are about to enter one of the most contentious political seasons in recent memory. How do we transcend the politics of contempt that dominates our country and turns friends into adversaries based solely on partisan loyalties? Despite our differences, can we find enough common ground that we can work together for the common good? Last year I preached a sermon series on … [Read more...]
Foxhole Promises
With Memorial Day just a few days away, I’ve been reflecting on a conversation I had with a now-deceased parishioner who, along with more than 150,000 other soldiers, had stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. While he lived to tell about it, he often jokingly acknowledged that he might have been killed had it not been for his short stature. “The bullets flew right over my head,” he confessed. “It was the only time in my life that I had been grateful to be short.” Surviving the … [Read more...]
Darkness is Inevitable
“The Darkness Is Inevitable” Psalm 23 Last summer, when I planned our “Simply Put” sermon series, I had in my mind the image of a wise, venerable sage, in the sunset of his or her life, sitting at a desk with pen and paper in a quiet, lamp-lit study, transcribing for us the simplest truths of faith and life—the holy, indispensable lessons that only one who has experienced the wonders and anguish, the heights and depths of life, could ever truly convey. She sits at her desk, and in the … [Read more...]
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