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

The religious world we know was formed between 250 and 50 B.C.E.

Christians have long lived in denial of our deep creaturely connections.

We have forgotten how to dream the land.

An insight I gleaned from Ernest Hemingway rings true for the mainline church today.

Lutherans are trained to hear the scriptures as proclaiming either law or gospel. By "law" they mean not passages from the Old Testament but all of the Bible's bad news: the sins we commit, the misery we experience, the sorrows we inflict on one another, the death we anticipate, the distance from God that diminishes our lives. By "gospel" they mean not the final reading on Sunday morning but the good news of the mercy given by a loving God, wherever in the Bible it is proclaimed.

And what would happen if we didn't?

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.

Preaching on biblical passages about labor and childbirth is important, but it's also dangerous.

We all see weeds, but we shouldn't make it our business to separate them.

The answer that comes out of a tornado is not the kind of answer we want.

Gangs excel at finding the lost, adopting them and sending them out. Therefore, gang youth can be recruited for apostolic ministry.

Dhini didn’t ask to be adopted. That's the way grace works.

I am confident that the new creation will include animals. I hope that it will include Merle, my deceased smooth-coat collie.