Sunday’s Coming

Paul has a way with a sneer. Nineteen times in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions wisdom, and each time we hear a growing sneer in his voice, until he nominates Christ as the wisdom of God. The word "wisdom" is distasteful to him because it is wooing the Corinthians to pursue a dead wisdom when they might turn to a wisdom he calls the "source of life"--and come alive.   When Paul writes that Christ is the wisdom of God, he's tapping into an ancient way of speaking about God. He's drilling down into proverbs, where wisdom plays the part of the creative spirit of God. Wisdom is begotten of God, the firstborn of all creation, the very spirit alive in Creation, a feminine expression of God. This isn't just some hocus pocus stuff from the Old Testament, either. The New Testament writers are so influenced by this thinking that they pay homage to Lady Wisdom everywhere.

Two of Merlyn's daughters, members of our church, asked me to visit their mom as the end of her five-month battle with cancer drew near. Merlyn was 72, and her life had not been easy. She was widowed at 43 and raised her four children by herself. When I came to see her, she was alone, lying in bed by the window in the back room of the house. One of her daughters introduced me and left.

For some Christians the most important characteristic of God is God's "unchangeableness," God the same--yesterday, today and forever. For myself, I value those instances in which God changes God's mind, "repents," we might even say, of past behavior.

Preaching transfiguration can be confusing. What's this "minor festival" really about?

I have found this year's Republican primaries fascinating, particularly the shifting fortunes of the candidates. While Mitt Romney has been more or less the frontrunner of his ambivalent party, the rest of the field has been one crazy jumble of surges and falls from grace. It's political spectacle at its most interesting, if not necessarily its best.

When our girls were still quite young, my husband Norm and I moved our family from our fast-paced life and work in Chicago to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where Norm had accepted a teaching position. Feeling a bit like Abraham and Sarah, we made a radical change of landscape.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet." In an election year, this passage from Deuteronomy makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach.

In a recent interview, Diane Keaton told the story of when she first decided to adopt a child. She was driving her father home from the hospital to die.

It's hard to believe that any preacher would choose to preach on this week's epistle reading. There are words here rarely spoken in our sanctuaries, and using this text might get a preacher sent to denominational reform school.

The Old Testament and gospel readings for Epiphany function as point and counterpoint. Isaiah offers a word of great comfort to those who have been so long in darkness. Impoverished as the hearers have been, honor and fortune are on their way. It's a message of rejoicing: the light that has dawned will make all who see it radiant.

One of the most disquieting aspects of our secularized society is the way some of faith's most treasured traditions have become devalued, trivialized and usurped.

Metaphor is essential to grasping the divine/human character of God. Nowhere is metaphor used more compellingly than by the apostle Paul, especially in his use of the word "adoption" as a metaphor for God's loving grace.

Several years ago I received from a parishioner a "Jesus Is the Reason for the Season" cookie tin. Every time I reached for a piece of Doris's divinity, I had to read that cheery-angry motto of Christian moralism.

The annunciation is analogous in my mind to the story of God's invitation to Abram to leave Ur and head to Canaan. Both stories have a bare, binary feel to them. These are hinge moments in the unfolding of God and God's mission with and for the world. Abram, yes or no? Mary, yes or no?

In October, a newly formed Right to Life group sponsored a week-long conference, entitled "Abortion and Feminism," on the campus of Yale Divinity School. The pro-choice posters posted by the Students for Reproductive Justice made it clear that seminarians are not of one mind on the issue.

As the second Sunday in advent approaches, I find the prophets of the season compelling. To my ears, their message sounds pretty consistent: "Change the ways of this world."

Patience is not one of my virtues, as those closest to me know. I want answers now, clarity now, unresolved issues settled now, anxiety lifted now.

Rarely do I compare biblical passages with television, let alone reality TV. But in preparing this week's Century lectionary column, somehow I started thinking about the show Undercover Boss, in which a high-level executive joins his or her own company's working ranks incognito. I couldn't let it go.

When I preach, I am absorbed in faces. I'm captured by the sustained opportunity preaching creates to gaze into the faces of those I am seeking to serve as a pastor. In worship, it seems more obvious that others are seeing me. In fact, I am truly seeing them. I see and absorb all kinds of things about people during these moments of proclamation. The most profound observation is also the most obvious: they are a gift.

Every pastor needs to address the issue of freedom and accountability. It's part of the pastor's role in nurturing a church community: neither a laissez-faire atmosphere nor a judicial one helps people grow as disciples.