May God guide you through the wilderness, and protect you through the storm.

In the Wilderness
May God guide you through the wilderness, and protect you through the storm.
Fostering conversations about the Church among theologians, pastors, and congregations.
Transfiguration Sunday
“Six days later.” That is a strange way to begin a reading. If you are at all curious, you are probably asking, “six days after what?” The answer, of course, is found in the previous chapter. In Mark 8, six days before our reading begins, Jesus has one of his most significant conversations with his disciples. In that conversation Jesus asks his followers “Who do people say that I am?” After spending so much time preaching, teaching, doing miracles, engaging in arguments over how best to follow God, Jesus wants to know what people make of him. The response seems to indicate that people think Jesus is a prophet. Then Jesus asks his closest followers, “Who do you think I am?” Peter quickly responds, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Read more
Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17 OR Matthew 17:1-9
“Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and imagine almost nothing” – Walter Brueggemann
More than forty years since its first publication, Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination has lost none of its urgency. In opposing the biblically-grounded imagination to what he calls “royal consciousness” – that system of individual affluence, concealed oppression, and spiritual smugness in service to the powers of the day – Brueggemann reminds us that before we can live into the reign of God, we must first imagine what that reign might look like. This presumes, however, that we can sufficiently free our imagination from the narcotizing grip of royal consciousness to recognize and lament our fears, shared suffering, and mortality. “It is the vocation of the prophet,” Brueggemann writes, “to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”
Royal consciousness conspires to numb us everywhere and always, even in this season of Lent, a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving meant to prepare us for the celebration of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. I succumb to the power of that consciousness when I mistake Lent as boot camp for my weak and wayward will. Not that my will doesn’t need a major overhaul, something that – with God’s grace – would be a most welcome consequence of my Lenten practices. True metanoia, however, depends far more on imagination than on the will. In order to embody God’s word and live into God’s reign, I need the necessary grace to imagine other ways of living, of thinking, and of desiring than the stale and lifeless habits of the dominant culture. Read more
Third Week of Lent
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
On a quick read, the epistle and gospel readings for Lent 3 may seem to be saying opposite things: Paul wants the Corinthians to learn from God’s judgment of the Israelites when they were in the desert. Jesus seems to warn against inferring that anyone experiencing misfortune is also being judged by God. When the lectionary places together texts that seem difficult to put together, we can see that as an invitation to put those texts into conversation with each other. When such texts are paired together for one of the Sundays in Lent, as these are, we should hope that such a conversation between them might better prepare us to engage in a holy Lent. Read more
First Sunday of Lent
Luke 4:1-13
The dictionary defines marvel (as a person) as one who is wondrously astonishing. With apologies to Captain Marvel, this week’s gospel text reveals one at whom we should truly marvel, and beyond that, one we should follow.
We receive Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness filtered through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. And it’s glorious. Read more