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…
August vacation, 2011
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…
July 3 — Musical Manifest
There is a white marble statue near Trafalgar Square in London. It is the statue of Nurse Edith Cavell. She was tied to a stake in German-occupied Belgium in 1915 and shot as a traitor. The daughter of a pastor, she had for many years headed a nursing home in Belgium, and she remained there…