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Where Can We Rest?
You can blame my Hebrew Bible professor for our theme this month. I distinctly remember him saying, “You never hear anybody preach on the Wisdom Literature, but there’s so much good stuff in there! It’s so relevant to our world today!” I’ll admit that I heard those words as a challenge. When Doug Donnelly and…
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Navigating Divine Fate Using a Compass of Joy
Ecclesiastes urges us to examine meaninglessness in order to arrive at joy; how can we navigate that process with integrity to God and ourselves? “Vanity of vanities, it is all vanity.” So starts off the book of Ecclesiastes, and it sure sounds like a great opening. This book is part of the section of biblical…
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Things Work Until They Don’t
Good morning. I’m Paula Moyer, a member of University Baptist Church and one of the substitutes filling in for Pastor Doug Donley during his medical leave. Full disclosure: I am nowhere close to being ordained and have no plans to do so. Therefore, I am deeply honored to be preaching today for the first of…
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Soften or Sharpen
There is an Israeli woman named Ada Sagi, an elderly woman, who lived in a kibbutz before October 7 of last year. She taught Arabic to Israelis so they would be able to talk with their Arab neighbors. She wanted there to be peace. But then she was taken hostage by Hamas. By the time…
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God’s Planting
This week I read an article by Presbyterian minister and church consultant Sarai Rice entitled, “Imagining a New Model for the Church.”[1] Rice notes a tension between the theological language we use to describe ourselves as church and the ways we actually organize church institutions. On the theological hand, we call ourselves the body of Christ,…
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Are You Ready?
I am so excited to be with you, First Congregational Church of Minnesota. Not only because this is one of my favorite Christian communities in Minneapolis, but also you have a lot of people here who are near and dear to my heart: Chris Bohnhoff, who was my partner in crime at United Theological Seminary…
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Trustworthy Prophets
Today’s Hebrew Bible reading ends with these words: “As Samuel grew up, God was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of God.” (1 Samuel 3:19–20) Not bad, right? What a legacy! I love this image…
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More than Fire
As I prepared to talk to our kids about the Pentecost story last week at the Family Gathering, I asked Sarah Almén whether she had any concerns about my lighting a candle as part of the storytelling. Her wise response was, “Nothing gets a kid’s attention like an open flame.” Other than the possible exceptions…
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Is This the Time?
Pop quiz: who can tell me what this Sunday is called in the Christian church calendar? The answer is Ascension Sunday! It’s the end of the church season of Easter, seven weeks of digging into the theological concept of resurrection. Whether you believe in Jesus’ resurrection in literal terms or in symbolic ones, Easter gives…
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In Praise of Ritual
Grace and peace to you, friends. So! We made it to sabbatical. Are you feeling relaxed and rejuvenated yet? That’s OK if not; we’ve got some time still. Some of you have asked me how things are going now that I’m “official.” And the answer is that it feels great. I attribute that at least…
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Abide
A week or so ago, on a beautiful spring morning, I listened intently to the radio. Anticipating the closure of the Stone Arch Bridge, reporter Cari Spenser interviewed Clawhammer Mike. She sets the scene this way: When the sun is out, the 51-year-old always sets up the same: white bucket for tips, foldable metal chair one…
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Touch and See
I am going to wade into a dicey subject this morning—touch. As we teach our kids, not all touch is good. From violent physical attacks and sexual assault to more subtle abuses of power like hugging someone without permission, the power of touch can so easily be misused. Our ways of touching the more-than-human world…
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It’s the Little, Brief Things
My father was not a religious man. He went to Sunday School as a child, where his father was the treasurer of the Sunday School. (I suspect that my grandfather took on this position so he wouldn’t have to go to church. The very complete set of Lincoln pennies he found in the children’s offering…
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A Living Dialogue of Love
Resurrection. Was it a literal happening? Is it a metaphor? Are metaphors “real?” What does it all mean? I appreciate the way John Dominic Crossan, a well-known historian of religion, points to what is actually important about Easter. He says: “To believe in resurrection is to participate in it.” Last Saturday, I walked the Gaza Ceasefire…
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Inhabiting the Story
Go into Jerusalem, untie a young colt, and bring it back to me, said Jesus to two of his disciples. On the scale of things that Jesus asked of his disciples, it was a fairly innocuous request; much easier than joining him for a walk on water, for example. Also easier, I would imagine, than…
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God of Our Hearts
The prophet Jeremiah was not known as a fun, upbeat guy. His was a voice of lament and judgement, calling the nation and its leaders out for their complicity in injustice. The context of today’s passage is the exile in Babylon—a time when the people became refugees, traumatized by war, alienated from home, and apparently…
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How Do We Go On?
The tension and drama in today’s passage from Numbers doesn’t just come out of the blue. After leaving slavery in Egypt, the people have been wandering in the desert for more than forty years. Imagine, forty years of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, diseases and exhaustion. Forty years of eating flaky white stuff. Poisonous…
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Idols and Lies
I want to invite you into the process of “thickening” our ancestral story from Exodus. Let’s begin by setting the scene. The people of Israel have arrived at Mount Sinai “at the third new moon” after being liberated from slavery in Egypt. It was at this same holy mountain in the desert wilderness that God…
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What a Covenant!
Have you heard of the Valentine’s Bandit? Juana Summers of NPR reported last week: Something special happens the night before Valentine’s Day in Portland, Maine. Children and adults alike go to bed knowing that, while they are sleeping, the Valentine’s Bandit will strike, covering doorways, windows, and telephone poles across the city in bright red, paper…
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Raising Each Other
I’m in middle school, 6th or 7th grade. The lights are darkened and a film is playing. The teacher has left the classroom for a few minutes. Teddy, the class clown, suddenly calls out, “Who farted?” The class giggles. Uh oh, I think. My stomach tightens and I try to look as small as possible. Bullies love to target me,…