Theolog

Blogging toward Sunday

In this series, authors offer reflections on the Sunday lectionary texts. Feel free to post a comment.

By Walter Brueggemann
Sunday, May 6
Acts 11:1-18

This is a staggering narrative on which the future of the church pivots. It is also an uncommon narrative, one that features a trance, the Spirit and an angel. Consequently it will not fit any of our categories, for trance, Spirit and angel push us outside of the ordinary—outside the box of our control, our explanations and our certitude.

Postliberal congregations?

By David Heim

The impact of Radical Reformation theology or, more broadly, postliberal theology (through the force of figures like Lindbeck, Milbank and Hauerwas) on mainline Protestants in recent decades has been impressive. It seems to have shaped intellectual discussion at least as much as the neo-orthodoxy movement did in the 1940s and 1950s

Vonnegut and the Century

In this week’s Newsweek, David Gates honors Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical fiction and his “appropriate” response to an era that included WW II, the Dresden firebombing, and other 20th-century horrors. Gates mentions a Century interview from 1976: the complete interview is posted here.

An additional article, "Kesey and Vonnegut: Preachers of Redemption," by James R. Tunnell, is available to subscribers on the Century Web site. (Click “Subscriber exclusive” on the home page).

Blogging toward Sunday

In this new series, authors offer reflections on the Sunday lectionary texts. Feel free to join the discussion by adding your thoughts.

By Walter Brueggemann
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 9:36-43

The structure of this narrative—the miraculous move from death to life—is clear and unambiguous. It is an epitome of the truth of the gospel that God—in Christ—has transformed the world toward well-being. It is indeed a “miracle,” which means that it is an inscrutable, inexplicable happening beyond all of our categories of explanation. The preacher’s task is not to explain (or explain away), but to witness to the concrete claim of the wonder that God’s power, in this instance, was decisive for life in the world.

Stolen goods

By Jason Byassee

Tom Long’s recent piece on plagiarism is important. I had hoped that the number of instances of plagiarism I’ve bumped into was abnormal, but I fear it is not. I’m thinking of a senior minister who downloads every word of every sermon, and of another prominent cleric who preached a plagiarized sermon at a funeral for a fellow minister, with loads of other clergy present (you didn’t think any of them would notice?)

The secret gospel

By John Dart

In a light-hearted column in the New York Times March 31, Peter Steinfels touched on a serious scholarly debate. In light of the attention given to dubious stories about the supposed ossuaries of Jesus’ family and to newly discovered gospel texts, Steinfels wondered why claims about the existence of the “Secret Gospel of Mark” have not attracted more notice.

Blogging toward Sunday

In this new series, authors offer reflections on the Sunday lectionary texts. Feel free to join the discussion by adding your thoughts.

By Walter Brueggemann
Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 9:1-20

It is easy to be jaded about Paul’s “Damascus Road experience” because we know it so well. The narrative report of that confrontation is so pivotal that it is referred to two more times in the Book of Acts and must have been known and celebrated across the church (Acts 26:6-16; 26:12-17).

What, precisely, is Caesar’s?

By Jonathan Marlowe

James Allen, an attorney for the United Methodist Church is warning churches to stay out of politics, according to the United Methodist News Service. Our primary mission, he says, is to make disciples for Jesus Christ, not get involved in politics. Churches can take stands on appropriate issues, just so long as they remain an “insubstantial part of their ministries.” Good thing William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day didn’t have lawyers like this.

Brueggemann sermon starter

By Walter Brueggemann

Editor’s note: In a new Theolog endeavor we’ve asked Walter Brueggemann to share some talking points on the Sunday lectionary for the next six weeks. These are meant to be the sort of observation one member of a lectionary group might make to another, or fodder for thinking and reading in advance of Sunday. Please let us and Dr. Brueggemann know what you think by posting a comment.

Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 5:27-32

In the Book of Acts the church is a restless, transformative agent at work for emancipation and well-being in the world.

Fuggedabout the Sopranos

By Lou Carlozo

The beginning of the end has come for Tony Soprano: April 8 marks the first episode in the last season of HBO’s ultrapopular series The Sopranos. When that final bullet casing falls to the floor, that final drop of murderous blood is shed, that final sip of Chianti passes over some sated hit man’s lips, I know I’ll party, as will many of the show’s devotees.

Except that I’m no Sopranos fan.

Watch your language!

By Richard A. Kauffman

“Our words matter. We have to think with care about them and to try and know something of how they will be heard.” Rowan Williams

A few years ago I asked a prominent evangelical theologian in an evangelical setting: “When did the language of ‘accepting Jesus Christ as personal Savior (and Lord)’ come into the Protestant vocabulary?”