Shoved by Grace

Maybe it’s just that I’m over 50 and arthritis is setting in, but today, this verse stuck with me, “Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.” (Hebrews 12: 12-13) Yep, many mornings I have drooping hands and weak knees. Speak to me, God. The metaphor of journey is one of the underlying currents of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament – Abraham and Sarah leaving their home and journeying thousands of miles to find the land that God had promised; the Israelites wandering for forty years in the wilderness on the way to their new home; Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem and beginning the journey toward his death and resurrection; Paul traveling all over the known world to spread the Gospel. It’s all about the journey, folks. We were never meant to stay where we are.  But the writer of Hebrews borrows on the words of Isaiah and John the Ba

One phrase in the Rev. John Elford's sermon (University UMC, Austin, TX) from this past Sunday has stuck with me - "words create worlds." The phrase is attributed to Rabbi Heschel, but probably go back much farther in Jewish tradition. It reflects the creation of our world, when God spoke and new life emerged. It also speaks to the irrevocable nature of our own words. Once spoken, our words shape our reality - for good or bad. I have had a lot of cause lately to be thinking about the nature of speech. We have all heard some astonishing rhetoric in the past few months. Some of it has been hateful and cringe-worthy, some of it encouraging and hopeful. But much of it has been said in haste, or anger, or depair, without much thought to the "world" that it is creating. In thinking about the power of our speech, I am drawn, of course, to the book of James. A curious book in the New Testament. It doesn't seem to fit in with the other epistles. Instead of addres

RESIST! This is quickly becoming the slogan of the American 'left' - those who feel that the current administration is trying to restrict the civil rights and the freedom of the most vulnerable in our nation. Of course, this slogan, and the goals and motives of this movement are called into question by many, even those within the church. I have seen several posts on facebook that use the Bible to justify blind allegiance toward any government or authority. The scripture most commonly used is Romans 13:1-2 - 'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.'  However, I believe that the key to interpreting this scripture comes much earlier in Paul's letter to the Romans.  'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the

I am a person that likes to organize my days. Even now that I am "between churches", I need to have a schedule and a routine. For example, today I was going to wake up, drink a lot of coffee, do my daily devotional, work on some Sunday school lessons, and after lunch, drive to the Pottery Barn/West Elm outlet to look for things for my new house. Yeah, that was the plan. Until I opened facebook. There, I saw a posting from a local colleague about a press conference this afternoon given by clergy in opposition several proposed anti-LGBTQ state bills, including Texas Senate Bill 6, the "bathroom bill" which will, if passed, prohibit transgendered people from using the bathroom in which they are most comfortable and safe. The organizers of the press conference are calling on all supporting clergy to show up, in collars and stoles, to lend support. And, my plans have now changed. Now it would be easy for me to assume that other folks have got this covered and go on my

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, the President made a statement to the gathered pastors that he wanted to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution." I'm sure that you're like many people, including me, that had no idea what the "Johnson amendment" was. To be honest, I knew that churches and pastors could not endorse political candidates but I didn't know the exact law that prevented it. The Johnson Amendment (named after Senator Lyndon B. Johnson) is part of a 1954 bill that amended the US tax code. It states that "churches and other nonprofit organizations that are exempt from taxation are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." What this means in real-life is that churches cannot su

Even though I left my church in London in September to repatriate, I volunteered to continue writing Sunday school lessons for the children, since it is my absolute favorite thing to do! Plus, it makes me focus on the lectionary and pare each passage down to its essential elements. It's tempting to pour all of my seminary education into each lesson for four to eleven year olds, but I'm not sure that they'd appreciate the nuances between ontological and operational Christology. Nope, when writing lessons for kids I ask myself, 'What is the one nugget that I want them to remember?' Today, I was working on a lesson about the Woman at the Well (John 4: 5-30). It's a strange one for several reasons: It is one of the few times that Jesus talks directly to a woman. It's a private conversation that somehow gets recorded. Jesus seems to be a fortune-teller, telling the woman all about her, perhaps 'shady', past. She is a foreigner, an outsider, but one of t

Today, February 1st, marks the beginning of Black History Month in the US. Every year, we make the sad, ironic observation that "it would be the shortest month of the year." And of course, it wasn't until 1976 that is was established, and even later that it was more universally acknowledged and celebrated. And while this isn't, and shouldn't be, a once a year kind of thing, as a white American, I feel that this is another opportunity for me to examine myself for racial bias and offer up continuing prayers for repentance and reconciliation. The state of racial relations has been much in the news lately, with the video proof of police discrimination and brutality towards Blacks and the Black Lives Matter movement. It continues with the disappointingly white cabinet and Supreme Court nominees put forward by the President. The election campaign and its aftermath seem to have given the "OK" for many hate-filled racists to go on the attack. As Christians, w