Romans

This Sunday's passage from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome seems to be an example of Year C's theological focus on those who are living in a state of alienation from Jesus Christ and the church. Yet when I think about rebuilding the bridges of love, trust, and belonging in contemporary Christian community, Paul isn't the first person who comes to mind.

Theology and advertising share the same root.

Theology and advertising share the same root.

Karl Giberson offers a cultural history of the Bible's first human. It's an intriguing and unsettling story.

People do not float through life in the bubble that is their skin. We are grounded, dependent beings that live through the lives and deaths of others.

We seem to always want something—anything—to happen. This has implications for the life of prayer.

I’ve been thinking often over the last few days and weeks about the last three verses of the magnificent eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

I loved writing Wearing God in part because it allowed me to rove around archives from more or less every century of the Christian past. The biblical images for God that most (American?) churches today largely ignore were decidedly not ignored in earlier eras.

I loved writing Wearing God in part because it allowed me to rove around archives from more or less every century of the Christian past. The biblical images for God that most (American?) churches today largely ignore were decidedly not ignored in earlier eras.

In Romans 7, sin seems to have at least as much agency as Paul does.

My roommate in seminary was and still is a vegetarian. I grew up eating, and still occasionally enjoy, Spam. Our understanding of food could not have been any more different, and those first few months of negotiating our shared kitchen posed some challenges.

We both agreed, however, that we loved to eat.

Church folks will not always agree—nor should we.

The household I grew up in did not have a lot of rules. My parents were first-generation immigrants who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. So even if we'd had a lot of rules, they would not have been home to enforce most of them.

What comes first—your actions or your beliefs? Here's Paul's answer: neither one. What comes first is the love of God.

What comes first—your actions or your beliefs? Here's Paul's answer: neither one. What comes first is the love of God.

For this Sunday's Living by the Word column, I focused on the theme of hospitality in the reading from Romans.

For my own sermon on this text, I almost went with the title "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

While this is not the exuberant rhetorical surplus we find in 1 Corinthians 13, love is still Paul's guiding principle.

The church is still uncomfortable with human bodies. It does little to promote the rich connection between bodies and Christian spirituality.

Paul uses "body" as a metaphor, and contemporary Christians do the same when we say "the body of Christ." This metaphorical usage generally takes precedence in the church’s practice.