Sunday’s Coming

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.

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.

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?"

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.

By far the most uncomfortable pastoral work I do is with people who want help for relatives in churches that are far away. I once got a call from one such relative who had been elected secretary of a church committee and wondered how she should minute the meeting. Worse are the complaints about pastors who do things I have done. (“My brother says they don’t sing hymns everyone knows. What can we do?”)

It's an old saw: When Protestants say “the Bible” they mean the New Testament, when they say “the New Testament” they mean Paul, and when they say “Paul” they mean Romans. I was looking forward to this opportunity to write Living By the Word. Then I received the specific Sundays I was assigned, and I confess I rolled my eyes a little. I could be yet another Presbyterian to write on Romans! I went with Romans anyway.

Years ago, at a denominational gathering, I heard a visitor from the global South say the following about North American Christians: They have so many things. They don’t need anything. Yet it seemed like the people were very thirsty, like they were in a desert and we were bringing them drops of water. These words refuse to leave me.

I was startled earlier this year when news anchor Peter Mansbridge called someone a Good Samaritan on The National, the flagship nightly newscast of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I was surprised that in our secularized, multifaith society, newswriters assumed that listeners would understand an allusion from the Bible. On second thought, I was less surprised.

A few years ago, while serving as a hospital chaplain, I received a call to a dying man’s bedside. Upon entering the room where a beautiful old man was breathing his last breaths, his son introduced himself to me: “Hi. I’m the oldest son, John.”

Does the divine expression, the word, really work? Does it make a difference in our lives and in the world? My yearning for the difference-making word drew me to James Crockett’s work in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.

One way to approach the epistle text for this week is to talk about the spiritual discipline of saying yes and saying no, an idea I was first introduced to by M. Shawn Copeland. (I find The Message translation of this passage helpful here.) God created us with the freedom to say yes and say no. But as Paul reminds us, we don’t always know how to use this freedom very well.

Some thoughts on preaching the binding of Isaac.

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.

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.

I learned many Bible stories by watching movies in Sunday school. They were those old-fashioned movies, shown on a reel-to-reel projector, that tried to portray the stories as some Cecil B. DeMille wannabe imagined they took place. They were seldom more than a few steps grander than the local Christmas pageant; most of the disciples basically wore fancy bathrobes. The Pentecost movie was dramatic.

From Easter morning until Ascension Thursday, Jesus is present and absent, enfleshed and distant, there and not there. He breaks bread and disappears. He shows up like a ghost, and then eats fish like everyone else. At the end of the story he blesses them, and then he withdraws. It’s striking that the disciples’ response, rather than to be confused or bothered by this yes and no of resurrection, is to head back to Jerusalem and worship with great joy. I think I would have wanted more.

One of my favorite confessions of sin is from a short poem called "Thread," by Dan Chiasson. "I am frayed where it would be highly useful," he writes, "to make a point." Many people, perhaps most, are at least vaguely aware of one of the consequences of human sin.

In Jean Thompson’s novel The Year We Left Home, Anita extends an impulsive invitation to a mere acquaintance, Rhonda. Their lives have turned out very differently. Anita enjoys a contented home life with her husband and children, while Rhonda has endured an abusive boyfriend for far too long. So Anita invites Rhonda to her home, and says she can stay as long as she likes. Driving home, Anita contemplates the implications of her sudden act of hospitality.

This week’s short passage from Acts gives a snapshot of the Christian community in Jerusalem, including a list of essential practices.

The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is a favorite of mine. I love the image of pilgrims traveling together, struggling to understand tragedy and loss. I love that Jesus enters the story as a pushy traveling companion who sidles up beside them and talks their ears off for the rest of the trip. And I love that it's not Jesus' incisive exegesis of the promises in scripture that open the disciples' eyes to his identity. It is his presence with them at a shared meal