Worship – The Redemption of Desire
(This paper is probably more easily read in a PDF format. Here’s A Link to the PDF.) Ever since Michael and I started Preaching Peace, we have struggled with the desire (pun intended) to make what we do practical, to help what we’ve learned in and through the study of Rene Girard’s “Mimetic Theory” to […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
First Reading Exodus 24:12–18 The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain […]
The Stations of the Cross – A Meditation on the Heart of the Father (online)
Introduction I’ve been “doing” the Stations of the Cross for 30 years in different settings. The first sets of Stations I encountered made me sad for Jesus. I cringed as I witnessed His suffering along The Way of the Cross. That just didn’t do it for me. I wanted something more, but I didn’t know […]
New Testament Prophecy
I wrote this back in 2012, but the need for prophets is only greater today, I think… “Eventually, the world will know they’ve met a prophet – a whole community of prophets.” This is the last line of the sermon delivered by the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A (track one)
First Reading Deuteronomy 30:15–20 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
First Reading Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b–12) “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake […]
“Love the Lord Your God”
I wrote this piece more than nine years ago. And Flo and was repping Progressive even back then. I bet that actress is tired of playing that role by now. At any rate, I was looking through some old writings and thought this was worth reviving. We think too little about the Song of Solomon. […]
Chivalry
I wrote this more than a decade ago for a blog I was writing called “Heartstrings.” It may not be as sensitive to gender issues as some might wish today, but I think the ideas still hold. So here it is. Chivalry Yesterday Sara and I went to Appleby’s for lunch. As is my custom, […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
First Reading Micah 6:1–8 Hear what the LORD says: Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my […]
Receiving Your Inheritance – The Beatitudes
Dear Friends, More has been written on the Beatitudes than I could read in a week. There can’t be anything new to say about them, can there? Still, having read them in Luke’s Gospel, in the setting in which Luke places them, I am going to presume to say something I hope will be new […]
Crucified Son of Man or Mighty One
Mark’s Chiastic Gospel Structure and the Question of Jesus’ Identity More than twenty years ago I was preparing to lead a Bible study on Mark. I began with the well known pair of verses that bookend the Gospel in which the heavens are torn. (At Jesus’ baptism and His death.) I then recalled that Mark […]
Receiving Your Inheritance – III Epiphany Year A
Receiving Your Inheritance started out as a weekly email I sent out to a couple hundred recipients, mostly members of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Some were fairly topical, some, like this one, were reflections on some bit of the Lectionary readings for a given week. This one caught my eye because it’s for the […]
It Is Finished
This piece began life as a meditation on one of the Last Seven Words of Christ one Holy Week many years ago. I don’t think it makes much less sense today than it did then. In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
First Reading Isaiah 9:1–4 (5-7 added in italics for context) But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year A
First Reading Isaiah 49:1-7 Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished […]
Divergence on the Lectionary – Baptism of Our Lord, Year A
First Reading Isaiah 42:1–9 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not […]
