What a fun honor! Jonathan Pennington of Southern Seminary invited me to be a guest on his new YouTube show “Cars, Coffee, Theology.” What a treat! You won’t be surprised that we talked about suffering and grace.
Suffering
I continue to wrestle not only with the issue of suffering and grace, but also the book I am attempting to write on the matter. What tone should I take? Should it be more academic, more of a personal reflection, or more essay based? The following is part of the […]
Proper 18 (23) (September 9, 2018) First reading and Psalm Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 Psalm 125 Second reading James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 Gospel Mark 7:24-37 7:27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to […]
Proper 7 (12) (June 24, 2018) Alternate First reading and Psalm Job 38:1-11 Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 Second reading 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 Gospel Mark 4:35-41 4:39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead […]
This is the bones of my sermon from this past weekend (Sunday, June 10, 2018). I shared a few more stories interspersed, but this is the substance of the sermon. Mental health issues are as real as cancer and should be considered as such. I have known far too many Christians […]
I saw this pop up on Facebook today. Even St. John Chyrsostom agrees with me, the Church should be a hospital. A place of remission of sins and healing, not a place of palliative care simply to ease our inevitable death.
The following was my Easter sermon delivered at St. B’s in 2017. Jeremiah 31:1-6 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 Colossians 3:1-4 John 20:1-18 1Cor. 15:3 For I shared with you the most important truth that I had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he […]
The Archangel from Tobit, as retold by Frederick Buechner, explaining how we blame suffering on everyone but ourselves. “When terrible things do happen, they fail to understand that for the most part they have brought them down on their own heads. They prefer to think that it is time itself […]
After tragedy has occurred to us, fallen upon us, how do we walk on, lacing up those painful shoes I talked about in my poor analogy? How do we carry on, day after day? We must begin by being open to and accepting the grace that is offered to us. I […]
“It is what it is.” A phrase people utter when they are enduring a hardship or, just as often, when there is a problem they would rather not deal with. It is what it is. A horrible, trite phrase. Used all the time, devoid of any real meaning, and all […]