Authors /
Jennifer E. Copeland
Jennifer Copeland is United Methodist chaplain at Duke University. Her book Feminine Registers: The Importance of Women’s Voices for Christian Preaching is forthcoming from Cascade.
The fantasy of death
If Paul is right, we are living fantasy lives. Anytime we live as though power conquers and wealth protects, we live a fantasy. Anytime we live like death wins, we live a fantasy.
Paul tells us about a future that has already happened—yet we live not only like it hasn’t happened yet but like we don’t think it ever really will.
Sunday, June 22, 2014: Jeremiah 20:7-13; Matthew 10:24-39
Jeremiah has great resolve—at least in retrospect.
Where words and numbers fail
It seems a little backward on the Sunday after Pentecost to receive instructions that have already been successfully carried out. Peter and the disciples blew them away last week, preaching up a storm of fire and spirit like a host of Rosetta Stone experts. But today we go back to the place where Jesus told them what to do: Go and make disciples.
Sunday, June 15, 2014: Matthew 28:16-20
Go and make disciples? More like wait and welcome converts.
Shrewd investment: Luke 16:1-13
In these days of Enron, Martha Stewart and wars waged over phantom weapons, we know better than to defend dishonesty. Then why would Jesus offer a parable lauding it? Upon closer inspection, however, this parable is just one in a long line of stories that Jesus tells about how to handle wealth.
Clean sweep: Luke 15:1-10
The best storytellers paint pictures with words, using them to fill our minds with vivid imagery. I remember reading the first Harry Potter novel to my first-grade son. Each time we completed a chapter and I turned the page to start a new one he would shift in my lap and look away from the book. Finally I asked him what was wrong. He replied, “I don’t want to see the drawing on the first page of the chapter because I want to think about what things look like all by myself.”
Tools for life
The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need.By Peter J. Gomes. HarperSanFrancisco, 388 pp., $23.95....
What students crave
College is a crucible in which opinions are formed, challenged and reformed; beliefs are redefined or perhaps defined for the first time, and attitudes become ...
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