Theolog

Blogging toward Sunday

By Craig T. Kocher
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
Sunday, March 9

Dying of words

I’ve noticed an alarming trend in ministry with college students: they use words better in technological media than in person. Emails, text messages and even facebook.com posts are often thoughtful, eloquent and witty. But one-on-one, the same students and I will stammer about, our words bumping into one another in mid-air. Awkward silences that don’t exist in cyberspace intrude on our communication.

Eucharist plus

By Jason Byassee

Why do we feel the need to augment the dispensing of the eucharistic elements with some sort of personal touch?

It has become common in eucharistic celebration for the server to look deeply into the recipient’s eyes, and with great pathos, to say his or her name: “Billy Bob, the body of Christ, broken for you.” If we don’t know a name, we offer the most spiritual smile we can. I’ve seen servers grab the underside of the communicant’s forearm, or press the bread into her hands with both of hers, in a sort of Lord’s Supper handshake. All ways of adding a personal touch to the eucharist.

The problem is in the need to add anything at all.

The walk home

By Lou Carlozo

My walk as a Christian amounts to an extension of my first walk home from school—when I became hopelessly lost.

In September of 1969, in the Baltimore suburb of Timonium, I was the youngest first grader in my class. I found the experience a bewildering tangle of socialization rites and emotional knots every new student knows. Not knowing how to make friends, I mumbled, and so was wrongly placed in a remedial reading circle. When I was teased about my Beatle-bangs haircut, I gritted my teeth. How to express my anger?

How I chose to arrest the confusion can only go down as one of those colossal blunders, one that scared the daylights out of me and my parents and, in a less innocent time and place, it could have cost me my life.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Edwin Searcy
1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Sunday, March 3

I don’t need anything else

A folk-singing friend taught me that if I could link a sermon to a song, listeners would remember the song, and thus be more likely to remember the sermon. Music resides in a part of the brain that is resistant to amnesia, he said. Putting the 23rd Psalm in this Sunday’s readings to music gives us preachers an opportunity to help the congregation rediscover this psalm and its power.

Iran up close and personal

By Richard A. Kauffman

In January I was on a learning trip in Iran, traveling with 11 other Americans, including leaders who’d lived in Iran as part of a student exchange program sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee. One afternoon, as our aged minibus was climbing the mountains en route to the city of Esfahan, the bus let out a cough, traveled another half mile or so, and then died. We had seen a shepherd on the hillside along the road tending a flock of sheep and goats, so while our driver tried to get the bus started, some of us walked back to watch him herding his cantankerous flock. He had five sheep dogs and a donkey, but dusk was coming, and it seemed as if the animals thought they had already put in a full day’s work. We couldn’t help but think that the sight was something like the scene Jesus saw when he talked about the sheep and the goats being separated at the Last Judgment.

Bumper sticker politics

By Jason Byassee

It’s always dangerous to weigh in on bumper sticker ethics. But on a recent cross-country drive I saw a couple of gems:

“I’m already against the next war.”

This one is clearly and cleverly aimed at the planners of an attack on Iran, who are desperately trying to start another theater in the War on Terror before their chief leaves the White House. The same drummed-up arguments are being rolled out, the same sham outrages and veneer of human rights arguments. This bumper sticker ethicist sees the plan, opposes it and is telling people about it.

The problem: how does he know?

Blogging toward Sunday

By Edwin Searcy
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42
Sunday, February 24

Thirsty for life

The texts speak of thirst for life. The people thirst for water in the wilderness. The Samaritan woman at the well meets the One who gives the water of eternal life. Paul speaks of God’s love being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

Funny clergy

By John Dart

One night last month Jay Leno, acting as both performer and writer while the writers guild strike dragged on, recruited a priest, a rabbi and a minister, each to tell a favorite joke on stage. The clerics told their tales smoothly and got laughs.

It made me long for more exposure to clergy who routinely touch funny bones with great one-liners and funny-yet-wise stories. Comedy is a difficult art in any venue, no less in church settings. But it can work in certain situations, such as with a pastor known for wry humor and congregants who expect and react to the humor.

Room for doubt

By Sarah S. Howell

“Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.” Frederick Buechner

Doubt is underappreciated these days. It’s not welcome on Wall Street, in classrooms (on either side of the evolution debate) or even in the pulpit.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Edwin Searcy
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Sunday, February 17

Life between the verses

Reading the assigned texts for this week overwhelms me. The call of Abram is told like a Haiku—just a few words, yet the mystery of our life as God’s people hinges on this ancient call and response. After the spare text in Genesis, the passages in Romans and John read like dense thickets of complicated sentences and layered metaphors. Together the texts wrestle with the need for faith, the longing for faith, the mystery of faith.

The preacher as political junkie

By Bob Cornwall

Two topics are forbidden in polite company: religion and politics. But preachers will talk religion. It’s their job; they’re expected to talk about religion as long as they don’t become obnoxious about it. Politics, on the other hand, is still a forbidden subject. Some say that it’s OK for preachers to talk about the issues, as long as preachers don’t become partisan. But talking “just the issues” can get you in trouble too.

Voting for eloquence

By Trygve D. Johnson

In an old episode of The West Wing, President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) comes back from church and confesses his frustration about with the homily and preacher:

He had a captive audience. The way I know that is that I tried to tunnel out of there several times. He had an audience and he didn’t know what to do with it. . . . Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music. And music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can’t.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Edwin Searcy
Genesis 2:15-17 & 3:1-7, Psalm 32, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11
Sunday, February 10

Struggling with temptation

Lent’s 40 days of preparation for baptism and discipleship are modeled on Jesus’ postbaptismal test in the wilderness. Reading about Jesus’ struggle with the devil opens up some potential directions for the preacher’s journey to Sunday: