A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church Aug 21, 2016 Matthew 6:7-15 Deanna preached a lovely sermon last week using Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. This morning, we heard Matthew’s. They are similar, but they are not the same. In Luke, the prayer is offered at the request of a disciple who asks Jesus…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church Aug 7, 2016 Job 42:1-6, 10-17 We’ve spent more time this summer with the book of Job than some faithful Christians have ever spent with the book in their whole lives. We’ve wrestled with its complexity and the nuance of its argument. We’ve heard the discussion with his…
After First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech last night at the Democratic National Convention (which was amazing and made me love her even more), a number of people in my Facebook newsfeed started asking when she was going to run for President. Again, hear me clearly. I love this woman and have so much respect for…
In college, I ended up reading a lot of books written in the style of “magical realism”. The writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende come to mind. Matthew Strecher defines magic realism as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.” (Matthew C. Strecher,…
Job 14:7-15 Job 19:23-27 A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho. July 17, 2016 We are in the middle of the Book of Job, the parable prose poem that addresses what happens after tragedy strikes. For Job, who has lost his family, his flocks, his fields, his everything—Job’s first response is to…
I spoke Sunday evening at a peace vigil in response to last week’s shootings of unarmed black men in Baton Rouge and a Minneapolis suburb. You can read my remarks here. As I was preparing my words, and even as I was waiting to speak, I felt like a fraud. I wasn’t sure why I was…
It was a bad week. So it is good for us to gather together. There were two high profile shootings of men of color by police last week–Alton Sterling and Philando Castile–one in Baton Rouge and one in the Minneapolis suburbs. There were two other similar deaths that didn’t get much news at all. They…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian in Boise, Idaho July 9, 2016 Job 3:1-10, Job 4:1-9, Job 7:11-21 Our first reading tonight from chapter 3 is from a horrible and beautiful poem in Job’s own voice, where he curses the day of his own birth. This is not just “woe is me!”. This is deep…
When I was a kid, my favorite book was PD Eastman’s Go Dog, Go! Partly I loved the final image of the dog party in the tree. I still want to go to a party like that. All of the different colored dogs of the world gathering together to eat cake and bounce on a…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church July 3, 2016 Job 1:1-22 Today, the Narrative Lectionary moves from 2nd Corinthians to a 5 week series on the Book of Job. Job is an old, old story. There are versions of Job’s story in other cultures of the ancient world too, although the details vary. Job…
Glass Overflowing 