Now I want to ask -- what happens inside you when you hear facts like these? How does your body respond? If you're like me, you feel something constrict or tighten up. When I think about global warming, I sometimes feel my belly squeeze and my breathing get shallow. I want to push the news away. I don't want to…
The trips to Mississippi and Montreal overlapped, and I couldn’t take both. I decided to go to Montreal, so for several days in Advent I mingled with delegates of the World Council of Churches, listened to speeches, wrote editorials, and joined thousands of citizens in marching through the city’s streets. It was the most vigorous celebratio
So here on the First Sunday of Advent, we ask ourselves: What are we waiting for? What is it that sets our heart on fire with longing? What is it that we await with eagerness and hope? When we ask ourselves such questions, no doubt all sorts of answers spring to mind, for all sorts of things may seem desirable…
Let's take it from the top. Once upon a time there was a king -- a wise and all-powerful king who decided to hold a wedding banquet for his son. He got everything ready and prepared a feast of the finest foods. He sent out invitations to his chosen guests, saying “Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet” (Matthew…
Take today's Gospel, for example. “The kingdom of heaven is like...” Jesus begins, and off he goes into a story that looks perfectly ordinary. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, agrees with the laborers to pay them the usual daily wage, and sends them out into his vineyard to work. The day…
We grin because it's so reasonable. If someone strode down a beach, waded into the surf, and tried to walk along the surface of the sea, you and I would dismiss the person as delusional. It would be absurd: you can't do it; you can't violate the laws of physics like that. Yet here we have a story in which…
“Time for a truce with dandelions.” That is what Chet Raymo concluded, regarding the natural world, and that is what Jesus concluded, too, regarding the life of the spirit. In Matthew's parable of the weeds and the wheat, the householder's servants are eager to tear out the worthless weeds that the evil one has planted in the field. But the…
According to the story we heard from the Book of Acts, it was on Pentecost, a Jewish festival that is celebrated fifty days after Passover, that the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles with tremendous power. They couldn't have predicted when the Spirit would come, and they couldn't have known what form it would take, but they had pra
And so it is for Jesus, who has lived his entire life in a relationship of extraordinary intimacy with God. As Jesus prepares to die and to go back to the loving Creator who sent him into the world, he wants above all to convey to his friends the fact that we, too, can share in the same intimate experience…
I want to speak about reclaiming the sacredness of God's creation, but right off the bat I have to admit that at first glance the phrase may sound absurdly naïve or sentimental. The sacredness of creation? As soon as I say these words, I imagine someone wincing and I hear the wry, even cynical voices of people who say dismissive…
