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Category Archives: current events
Salt of the earth
Both of them, Isaiah and Jesus, are preaching a political message, about the end of oppression and the elevation of equality, about the mercy and justice of God, and that new world order, the kingdom of God. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. You are God’s gift, God’s political campaign contribution. You are God’s PAC. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged 1 Timothy 1:15, Christ crucified, Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20, politics, salt and light, salt of the earth
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It is too light a thing
We see our fellow godchildren as like us, or not like us, or invisible to us. But it is God’s salvation that we proclaim, and that we claim for ourselves, and God created light to shine from one end of the universe to the other. The light of God’s salvation is for everyone. It is the light which enlightens every body, which lifts every burden, which anoints every wound with healing. Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged anti-Semitism, immigration, Isaiah 49:6, light, Martin Luther King Jr, Matthew 11:28-30, racism
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Race and guns: a call to the occasion “For Such a Time As This” with the Rev. Sharon Risher
I was honoured to offer this opening prayer and call at lunch with God Before Guns and the Rev. Sharon Risher at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights, today. What do guns have to do with any of this? That … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer, story
Tagged God Before Guns, Mother Emmanuel Church, Rev Sharon Risher
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On the need to pray, and not to lose heart
I pray so as not to lose that heart of God that keeps insisting that justice is possible, that mercy is reasonable, that resurrection is coming. I pray, not so that I can change anyone else’s mind, let alone God’s, but so that God, by her insistence and irritating persistence can change my own heart and mind, bringing them more in alignment with the will and word of God. I pray so as not to lose heart, to hear over and over and over again that widow’s word that God’s justice is eternal, preexisting, loaded with mercy, and final. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon
Tagged Black Lives Matter, Charles Fager, Jeremiah 31:30, John Fischer, judge, Luke 18:1-8, Matthew 7:1, prayer, salvation, widow
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What are we worth?
No matter what we do, it is no more than Christ has ordered us to do, no more than our baptismal promises to resist evil, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the life and dignity of every human being; to become slaves to the love of God and of God’s family in creation.
But, “worthless”? Continue reading
Word and deed
Prophets, true prophets, are truth-tellers. They are not in the prophecy business for popularity. Unlike politicians, their constituency is not power brokers but the poor in spirit, the people of God who seek hope not in empires and armies but in the word of God, God’s promise to their ancestors to walk with them and not to leave them lost and alone. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Body of Christ, Jeremiah 32:1-15, Jesus, power, prophecy, word and deed, Word of God, Year C Proper 21
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100 orange stoles
In 2016, in the run-up to the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I began making orange stoles to bring the #WearOrange movement, with its focus on life and hope, back to church. It wasn’t exactly nor entirely my … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged #WearOrange, orange stoles, Sojourners
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#DoSomething
Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence
Tagged #dosomething, #WearOrange, citizenship, gun violence, Ohio, orange stole movement
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Release to the captives
Do not listen to me. The leader of the synagogue had the pulpit and he talked right past Jesus, and he was wrong. The people – the people had more sense – they saw what Jesus was doing, bringing release to the captive and rest to the weary, spreading the grace of God thick on the Sabbath bread, and they rejoiced at his incendiary kindness, his audacious mercy, his lawless love.
They heard Jesus say, “You are set free,” and they were jubilant. Continue reading
Posted in current events, sermon
Tagged Declaration of Independence, freedom, Luke 12:49-56, promise, sabbath, slavery, The 1619 project
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