“Plan B, C, D…”
Jeremiah 18:1-11 When my sister and I were kids, we and the other neighbor kids—there were almost a dozen of us at one point—used to spend a lot of time playing in the creek that ran behind our house. One summer, we discovered that in one place in the creekbank […]
“The End Is Not the End”
Isaiah 11:1-16 It’s safe to say we—not just in the United States but all of Western civilization—are living in a cataclysmic time right now. That’s not just because we are in the middle of a pandemic, a brand-new infectious disease that we are learning about in real time, just figuring […]
“Far from Home”
Deuteronomy 29:16 — 30:14 If you have even a nodding acquaintance with Irish and Scottish folk music, you know that emigration and exile are pretty prominent parts of the tradition. Both of those countries, under English control, ended up seeing many of their people leave, for a variety of reasons. […]
“A Nickel is a Nickel and a Dime is a Dime”
Hosea 1:2-9 “Hesitation Blues” is a very early blues song, probably most famously recorded by Jelly Roll Morton in the 1920s. Some people claim Jelly Roll wrote it, but it appears to be traditional, and there are several versions of it out there that were published before Morton’s; and lots […]
“This Is Who I Am”
Exodus 33:12 – 34:9 Thursday night, after my Zoom class ended, I went downstairs and joined Mike, who was watching TV. First he was watching something about the philosophy and practice of “eugenics” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which was wildly popular in the United States until […]
Vows
Deuteronomy 29: 10-15 Once upon a time, a man moved his entire extended family—seventy in all—into Egypt to get away from a famine. That man was Jacob, also known as Israel, the grandson of Abraham and Sarah, whose story we heard two weeks ago. Jacob’s second-youngest son Joseph had, through […]
Get Off The Boat
Genesis 9:8-17 Seems like every time there’s a flood somewhere, somebody is on the news needing to be rescued after they drive into water over the road. There are a whole bunch of reasons not to do this, of course. For one thing, roads occasionally wash out when it floods. […]
Building a House
2 Samuel 7:1-17 Recently I got a large envelope in the mail from Phillips Seminary, where I will be starting my Doctor of Ministry program this month. It contained the student handbook and a whole bunch of forms I need to sign and send back. There’s one that says, yes, […]
Stone Soup
(“Stone Soup” is a European folktale of unknown origin. It was first published in French in 1720 and English in 1806. www.stonesoup.com has a complete account of the tale’s development and publication over time, as well as derivations known in popular culture today. This retelling is entirely mine, based on my remembrance of hearing the story read by my third-grade teacher.)
What Are Our Essentials?
I was the second Disciple to attend my seminary. The first was actually a transplant from the United Church of Christ, much more recently than I had been transplanted from the American Baptist Church.