Blog - Jesus

This past Sunday, November 19th, I had the pleasure of preaching at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Grand Marais, MN.

(The below was a Facebook post I wrote this morning before church.  It seems to have resonated with enough people that I decided to repost it here as a blog.  Peace.)

Both before and after Charlottesville, I’ve been seeing all sorts of calls to respond to palpable hate with love.

Let me be clear:

For what may or may not be the umpteenth time, E and I were belting out Hamilton on our way to her confirmation class this morning.

Take in this poem by Maria Melendez Kelson.

Most recently, it was White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer who claimed that Hitler “didn’t even use chemical weapons…on his own people.”

So, Donald Trump will be inaugurated on Friday as our next president.

“Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
So, tells Matthew in 2:7-8, said King Herod to the wise men after learning from them that the king of the Jews had been born.

Dear followers of OMG,

The late Joseph Sittler, Lutheran theologian and wordsmith, savored life.

What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say–courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature…we lack a holy rage–the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth…a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…but never the chameleon.
Call committees, when sketching out a profile for their next pastor, are awfully drawn to words like these: kind, available, comforting, pastoral, articulate, flexible, intelligent, dynamic, wise, knowledgable, organized, trust-worthy, confident.

Merry Christmas!

This morning, I found myself trolling some earlier blogs I wrote about Advent and Christmas, trying to remember what thoughts I have had about them in the past (I have lots of thoughts, but can hold on to only one or two at a time).

I know Christmas is around the corner (even my family is starting to bust out the Christmas decorations), but Advent does yet have dibs on our attention for a short spell.

A few months back, which was several years later than it should have been, I stumbled on poetry by Billy Collins.

On this occasion of the 70th Holocaust Remembrance Day, the following is a reworking of some thoughts I’ve offered in presentations over the last several months.

Saturday, my father, my daughter, and two friends went to cut our Christmas tree.  Every year, we march out to some spot out of town for the annual sawing down of the Tannenbaum.

This year’s Advent launches us into the “Year of Mark,” the period when the primary gospel readings come from, well, Mark, obviously.

Last night, we learned that there will be no indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.