Come, Eat, Taste Again Your Salvation

“The gospel of Luke bounces from table to table, meal to meal, and while the details are omitted, I cannot help filling them in with my imagination. You can smell the smoke from the fish. Candlelight reflects off the slick oil in a bowl on the table. Bread is broken. There is wine in cups.

Why did Luke take such pains to include food at every turn in his gospel? Luke wants us to know that this Jesus is the same Jesus who died, who was buried, who has returned—changed yes, but still the same, wounded, hungry, and yearning to be with his people.”

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“You a lie and the truth ain’t in you”

“I grew up with this quote weaved among the many southern sayings I heard the elders speak over us and into us as children. Until I became an actual student of theology I did not know that this saying, and many others, are actual scriptural references from specific texts. 1 John 2 reads in part: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'”

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Drifting Apart

“It never ceases to amaze me how easily the church, even our beloved Episcopal Church, slips into a kind of legalism, using scripture to lend credence to creating even more rules and rubrics, higher walls and thicker barriers, in a world already drifting apart, especially when all we crave is community, connection, and healing. We yearn to come together!”

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Being a Holy Mothering Church with and for Our Holy Mothering God

“In the words of the African-American Spiritual, “sometimes we feel like a motherless child, a long way from home.” So, on this Mothering Sunday, in the wake of International Women’s Day, during this Women’s History Month, as we ponder today’s Scriptures from A Women’s Lectionary, we give thanks for people who shared God’s motherly love with us, and made us feel at home, so that we can share that love with those who feel like motherless children a long way from home.”

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Rahab

Rahab’s story raises some important questions, such as: who is worthy of being safe? Who is worthy of being saved? Who is deserving of God’s blessing and favor for generations? Could this be the destiny of a prostitute?

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Sermon for February 18

“‘Goodbye, Earl’ was one of the last songs The Chicks played in the concert that night, and clearly one that everyone was there to hear. It’s a song about premeditated murder and abuse …. and I like it. But why?” (Content note: this sermon discusses domestic violence.)

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Sparks of Connection

“The spiritual greats of our faith tradition tell us that fasting is an opportunity to draw closer to God. In giving something up for a short season, we create necessary space to focus new or renewed attention on our connection with God. I wish I could say this has worked for me. But, more often than not, when I am fasting, I seem to become more keenly aware of my appetites, my hunger, my grumbling stomach or my fuzzy decaffeinated brain. So, how is it that we cultivate space for God? Or, more importantly, how do we cultivate the desire to find our way across the gulfs between us and the one who made us?”

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Sermon for the Feast of Absalom Jones

“This work of Justice: Becoming God’s Beloved Community is challenging. That is why I need to know that saints like Absalom Jones chose Christ’s love and friendship, in spite of slavery, in spite of heartbreak, in spite of violent, racist, demonic coloniality, My devotion to saints who embodied, lived, and worked as antiracist and decolonial agents of Christ’s reconciling love has become a slight obsession of mine. I want you to fall in love with these saints and to be as obsessed with them as I am.”

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