Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind…
Havel, Hitchens and Kim – Devotion given at Vermont State House 1/4/12
It was 22 years ago, almost to the day, that the Velvet Revolution came to an end in Czechoslovakia with the election to the office of President a man of peace – Vaclav Havel. Havel was most famously known for his leadership in that political uprising. To those who study his work, he was a…
World Communion
I. World Communion Sunday -- Favorite, but Appropriate? I've told you before, I think, that my favorite Sunday of the year is World Communion Sunday. Not just because it was my first time 11 years ago, in this pulpit. But because I think of myself as a citizen of the world, because I think that…
July 17 — Jesus' Ethical Insight
Matthew 13:24-30 It was natural that such a position [of humility] would be deeply resented by many of [Jesus'] fellows, who were suffering even as he was. To them it was a complete betrayal to the enemy. It was to them a counsel of acquiescence, if not of despair, full to overflowing with a kind…
July 10 – Living with Failure
A teacher of mine once wrote a memorable, pithy sentence in a book on the Beatitudes that has stuck. He said that the Beatitudes are a toolkit allowing a disciple of Jesus to become a Jesus theologian. Over the years I have understood this idea in a broad sense -- applicable not just to the…