Tag: kindness
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Revolutionary Activity
A long time ago – more than ten years ago, less than thirty – I ended up behind a car at a traffic light with a bumper sticker that read “Are you kind?” I wasn’t sure. I suppose I had never really thought about it before. After that, I did. Some time later, I ended […]
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Studying Acts 18 1-3, 18-26, and Romans 16 3-4
This week we are focusing on four of the six places in the Bible that mention Priscilla, or Prisca: Acts 18:1-3, 18-21, 24-26, and Romans 16:3-4. [The other texts are 1 Corinthians 16:19 and 2 Timothy 4:19.] In keeping with the theme of this five-week series of lessons on New Testament women called to specific […]
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High-Stakes Disagreement
Usually, when people disagree with me outside of church, they just tell me I’m stupid or crazy or am making a colossally bad decision, or they call me names. They don’t usually add that my faith in God is insubstantial, or that I must not be able to read the Bible, or that I’m going […]
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Get New Self Talk
Some people habitually attack themselves. “What are you doing??!” “You idiot!” “Fat. Loser.” “Sometimes I wish I could tear you up in little pieces and start over from scratch you worthless …” Don’t ask me how I know this. And sometimes we can hear something entirely new in a reading from the Bible we have […]
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Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
It turned out to be a big theology day. In not-that-early Sunday school, as we were thinking about 1 Peter 1:13-25, we got all wrapped up in some of the big stories of the Bible, thanks to some concerns about blood and sacrifice (which seems coercive) vs. grace (which seems like a gift): the story […]
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How Many Rules Do We Need?
Forni, P.M. Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project.] Society and culture are changeable; they are responsive to our choices and practices. This is one of the shared implications of the social constructionist paradigm and of virtue ethics. It’s ironic that the advocates […]
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Don’t Be a Mean Girl
I taught my daughter not to be a “Mean Girl.” Here’s what happened: Hannah Montana came on Disney Channel in the spring of 2006. It was a “comedy.” And I noticed that MANY of the laughs were achieved by Hannah or one of the other characters saying something mean. Funny, because mean. Possibly with some […]
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First Sunday in Lent
Those of us who have spent a lot of time hanging out in or around churches have a tendency to know “the right church answers” to a lot of things. We have the idea that we should give this right church answer if the question or the topic comes up.
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Points of Reference
My grandparents were refugees. From China, technically, because they had left Russia in 1929. They lived in Harbin for two years or so, before they managed to be part of a small group that received a waiver from the US government to enter the country from China. They needed a waiver because of the Chinese […]
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Over the River and Through the Woods
Psalms 120-134 are each labeled “a song of ascents.” I learned, somewhere, that the “ascent” in question was the trip from anywhere to Jerusalem, which is up in the hill country, during the pilgrimage festivals (Tabernacles, Passover, and Pentecost). But according to Chabad, which probably knows more than the average white Christian seminarian, there are […]
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Exegetical Exercise Hebrews 13 1-8, 15-16
Of the choices offered in the Revised Common Lectionary, Hebrews 13:1-8 & 15-16 seems like the one that could speak to the people at the small rural church where I agreed to preach on Sunday better than others on the list. The context is the question of “acceptable worship” of a God who is a […]
Matters of Interpretation 