Month: May 2021
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Tough Questions for Thinking Faith
Why is there still an ongoing feud between “the creationists” and “the evolutionists”? I know there is one. I know that some people are deeply invested in one side or the other of this argument, to the tune of having written whole books, or built whole expensive and unaccountably popular theme parks down the road […]
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Trinity Sunday
Call to Worship [Based on Psalm 29] Glory! Glory! Glory!The Glory of God fills Creation;the Glory of God fills Creation with life;the Glory of God fills time and space;floods the world with beauty;floods all things now living with meaning;floods time with purpose;the voice of God shouts and whispers in it all.In this place and timemade […]
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Shabbat shalom
The quasi-biological and quasi-historical thought of to-day, however different the aims of each, have worked together to establish a more tenacious and oppressive belief in fate than has ever before existed. The might of karma or of the stars no longer controls inevitably the lot of [humanity]; many powers claim the mastery, but rightly considered […]
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Reflecting on Jonah 3
We are studying Jonah 3 for Sunday, May 30: the imaginative, over the top vision of successful prophetic ministry: universal repentance, and divine forbearance. [Some notes on the text are here.] Here are some questions we might want to ask ourselves, or discuss in class: The people and animals of Nineveh in this story give […]
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Studying Jonah 3
We are studying Jonah 3 for Sunday, May 30. This is the dramatic peak of the story, when Jonah finally goes to Nineveh, and the Ninevites repent, and God doesn’t destroy that great city. We studied the entire book of Jonah several years ago; those notes are still online: Jonah 1 Jonah 2 Jonah 3 […]
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Authority Issues
Most people have “authority issues” of one kind or another. Some people resist any external authority. They fly into “no one tells ME what to do” mode right away. They’ll refuse to do something as soon as someone else says they must, or should, or might just want to, even if they think it’s basically […]
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Pentecost (B)
Call to Worship [Based on Ezekiel 37] Come, Holy Spirit! Giver of Life!Wake the dead.Let us worship God! And you shall know that I am the HOLY ONE, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. Ezekiel 37:13 Image: Fresco in the monastery at Zica, Serbia, photo by […]
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Shabbat shalom
Where there is danger, the rescuing force grows too. Martin Buber, I and Thou, Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1956), 62. Image: Detail of an image of the stained glass work in Hadassah Hospital, Ein Kerem, Israel, “The Tribe of Levi,” Marc Chagall / CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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Reflecting on Ezekiel 18 1-9, 30-32
We are studying Ezekiel 18:1-9 and 30-32 for Sunday, May 23. The text is part of an uncompromising statement of God’s concern with individual righteousness or transgression, along with a plea to choose repentance and righteousness, as the way of life. [Some notes on the text are here.] Here are some questions we might want […]
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Maybe Metaphysics After All
Almost no one operates without some metaphysical paradigm, if indeed anyone does. Being a modernist-postmodernist kind of thinker, I have gone along for decades assuming that whatever those metaphysical premises are, they are simply unprovable. At some point, a person just has to decide what she’s going to accept. That view traces back to Kant, […]
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Studying Ezekiel 18 1-9, 30-32
We are studying Ezekiel 18:1-9 and 30-32 for Sunday, May 30 23. This is the core of Ezekiel’s uncompromising announcement of individuals’ responsibility for their own behavior, one of Ezekiel’s distinctive messages. [Here are some questions about the text.] Here are my notes on this text: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: Some general background notes on Ezekiel, […]
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The Same Old Thing
Our church wants to be able to say “we are welcoming and affirming,” and mean it. On the whole, this feels like a good thing to me, especially since it is often true. I’ve begun to learn that I have enough reservations about the project and the way we’re going about it to fill a […]
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Seventh Sunday of Easter (B)
Call to Worship [Based on Psalm 1] There is Instruction here, that calls us. Instruction like a river, and like a tree planted by a river. Let us delight in it; Let us drink deep from it; Let us be transformed by it; Let us worship God! 1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice […]
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Shabbat shalom
The spirit is truly ‘in its own realm’ if it can confront the world that is unlocked to it, give itself to this world, and in its relation with it save both itself and the world. The distracted, weakened, degenerated, contradictory spirituality which today represents spirit would be able to do this only if it […]
Matters of Interpretation 