Preparing a Place
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-24I have always held a special place in my heart for the Parable of the Sower, probably because my earliest childhood memories include vague images of tripping through our community...
View ArticleWaiting for the Children of Godot
Romans 8:12-25Lately I have been thinking about the absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. Anyone who has seen or read it knows that the plot, along with the scenery on stage, is...
View ArticleMustard, Mustard, and More Mustard
Matthew 13:31-33For the better part of thirty years I have been a die-hard vegetable gardener, and probably a little snootier about it than I should be. In my mind, flowers have always been a nice...
View ArticleBlessing, Breaking, and Giving
Matthew 14:13-21It is appropriate, I think, that our text for this week falls on the third day of August, a time of year when the garden is practically bursting at the seams with vegetables. I spent...
View ArticleFishermen Rush In
Matthew 14:22-33Miracles – I don't know what to do with them. In the first place, apart from being improbable in a world that we know to be governed quite nicely by the laws of physics, miracles always...
View ArticleGathering Others
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8Matthew 15:21-28I'm not really sure what drew me to Lars and the Real Girl, but after seeing the film last night it has immediately become one of my favorites. It wasn't the clever...
View ArticleCompassion over Law
Exodus 1:8-2:10 Matthew 16:13-20 It's a week before classes begin at Hastings College, so I have taken this final opportunity to get out of town for a few days and visit one of my favorite parts of the...
View ArticleEver on Holy Ground
Exodus 3:1-15If there is one thing that Jerry Seinfeld and I have in common – apart from our tendency to hang out with some pretty eccentric people (and you know who you are) – it's our rather childish...
View ArticleWho Is My Neighbor?
The following is an excerpt from my book, Learning the Language of the Fields, which I found to be relevant to the Season of Creation lectionary texts for this week.Genesis 2:4b-22 When we consider the...
View ArticleBaptism in Dirt
Season of Creation 2A: Land SundayGenesis 3:14-19; 4:8-16Matthew 12:38-40Living in south central Nebraska, one comes to know the seasons by their distinctive signs. Every March, for example, the...
View ArticleThe Return of Virtue
Exodus 32:1-14It feels good finally to get my fingers on a keyboard again! With the start of a new school year I'm always a little harried trying to cover all the bases – making sure all of my advisees...
View ArticleAllies or Enemies?
Matthew 22:15-22As I write this morning, the first whispers of a gray autumn are in the air, and thankfully so because in Nebraska we have been enjoying an Indian summer for quite some time. Yesterday...
View ArticleShock and Awe in the Kingdom of God
Amos 5:18-24If there is any day on our civic calendar that approximates the religious ritual of atonement it would have to be the first Tuesday in November. While historians are fairly resolved on the...
View ArticleWrath of God 2.0
Zephaniah 1:7-18Matthew 25:14-30When I look back on my early childhood images of God I realize that such notions as wrath and judgment really had little influence on my budding faith in the Creator....
View ArticleBroken Bodies, Breaking Bread
Thanksgiving 2008Growing up in Ohio I was raised on stories of Johnny Appleseed, the itinerant sower who probably never had the chance to reap the fruits of his labors. His was a vocation forged in...
View ArticleEscape from Babylon
Isaiah 40:1-11Mark 1:1-8Psalm 85Before I begin, I would just like to wish everyone a happy New Year. Yes, I know that January 1 is roughly a month away, but I'm getting started early on a resolution...
View ArticlePotato Stamp Epiphany
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11One of the great benefits of teaching religion to college students is the sneak-peak I get every so often of what the church might look like in twenty or thirty years. Every Monday...
View ArticleBizarro-World
Luke 2:1-20John 1:1-14About five years ago, in one of my periodic attempts to purge myself of excesses, I made the happy decision to do away with that luminescent demon we all know as television. I...
View ArticleThe Myrrh's the Thing
Isaiah 60:1-6Matthew 2:1-12The spring semester will soon begin at Hastings College and this means that I will once again be teaching an introductory course in the New Testament, something I look...
View ArticleBaptism or New Creation?
Genesis 1:1-5Mark 1:4-11When I was in eighth grade I experienced my first independent excursion away from home when I attended a week-long church camp in what was then a rather remote part of central...
View ArticleThe Cause of Their Falling
I Corinthians 8:1-13I will admit something that no good Protestant – let alone a Presbyterian – should have any business revealing: sometimes I just don’t get what the apostle Paul is trying to say,...
View ArticleStrange Faith
This essay originally appeared in the journal Lumunos (Spring 2009). Job 38:1-11 A little over seven years ago I made the move from Knoxville, Tennessee, nestled in the gentle arms of the Cumberland...
View ArticleToo Much and Too Little
2 Corinthians 8:7-15I have mentioned elsewhere in these pages that I have never been overly enthusiastic about the Apostle Paul. Perhaps I have latent Judaizing tendencies, like so many of Paul's...
View ArticleEarthly Vision
2 Corinthians 12:2-10Every year about this time I'm fascinated by a transition in my town that may appear to some as wholly unremarkable. Around the first of May the grocery and hardware stores in...
View ArticleA Kingdom Not of This World: A Good Earth Day Reflection
John 18:1 - 19:42Of all my childhood memories I hold a special place in my heart for the day when I came to realize that I was part of something much greater than myself. Nineteen seventy was a...
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