In the Jewish texts called the Talmud there are some teachings of 2nd and 3rd century Common Era rabbis that talk about whether or not God prays, and if God prays, what does God pray. It sort of sounds like a spiritual version of the omnipotence paradox, “Can God create a stone so heavy that […]
This is quite the story to kick off our summer sermon series about “Disputing with God.” It’s at once familiar, at least in its outline and persistent cultural allusions, and at the same time like that movie we saw a long time ago, the whose general plot we can remember, but the details and side […]
“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law….” How’s that for a “Happy Father’s Day!”? Several times this week, as we read this morning’s scriptures for our staff meeting devotions and when we gathered for the Wednesday Bible study, I’ve […]
Two weeks ago, I began the story of my first night on call as a student chaplain in the hospital. I had begged my way into the internship program because the program supervisor (in training herself) had deemed me too young and inexperienced at first. After working several daytime shifts in the first week on […]
One of my first “hands on” ministry experiences took place during the month-long January term in the middle of my first year of seminary; I turned 23 years old that month. Instead of signing up for a traditional classroom elective course, I had applied for and was barely accepted into, a half unit of what […]
As we have already been reminded this morning a very real and worrisome way, the tongues of fire that suddenly appeared among the apostles gathered all together in one house for Pentecost probably didn’t give them a sense of the spirit, spirit of gentleness. Instead it came, as Acts tells us, with a sound like […]
