16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, RCL)

Anya Silver’s imaginative poems speak from nothingness into new creation.

We are God’s artifacts—beautiful, incomplete, and mysterious.

To sing of Jesus Christ in Paul's terms seems strange and grandiose and a bit out of touch with the lives of ordinary people right now.

What is Jesus thinking when he tells the parable of the dishonest steward?

All living things are touched by divine grace—and caught up together in movement toward union with God.

At first read, this Sunday's Colossians text landed for me with a bit of a thud between the rich narrative images of Genesis and Luke. But the text engages the themes of calling and vocation in important ways. 

God’s experience of hospitality—in the mysterious travelers and in the person of Jesus—inspires us to think beyond an Abraham-vs.-Sarah or Martha-vs.-Mary divide.

It's up to pastors to remind each other to talk to people instead of about them.

Are the rest of us so different from our brothers and sisters in Libya or in Charleston? Are they heroes with whom we can never identify?

The wrenching dislocations of World War II were often pitilessly ignored by the world. What story will be told of our time, and of us?

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.

Shortly after my most recent move, my long-time boyfriend and I ended our relationship. The next week, I was scheduled to preach. 

I'm part of a multi-pastor church, and my colleagues graciously offered to step in and preach in my place. But I was stubborn. I decided that I wanted—no, needed—to preach.

My grandmother died in 2005, on the eve of the feast of Saints Mary and Martha of Bethany. The next day I went to the weekday eucharist at St. James Cathedral in Chicago, and the story of Martha and her sister brought me instantly to tears. Like so many women of her generation (and not only hers), my grandmother was deeply identified with her hospitality and service. She was a lot like Martha, and I loved her for it.

I am more troubled now than I was then at the way this story is gendered in our reading.