Listening to God Sing My Story

This reflection was shared at the “Emerging Scholars of Christian Spirituality” Breakfast at the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Francisco CA on Sunday, November 20, 2011. Sandra Schneiders: “I suspect that the reason the self-implicating character of the study of spirituality is problematic for those of us in the discipline is not that […]

Letting Forgiveness Occupy Violence

Social activist and lay theologian William Stringfellow offers hard-hitting insight on war and peace in An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. After insisting on the collective guilt of all humanity in perpetuating violence and the power of death (with a particularly harsh critique of the United States), Stringfellow calls Christians […]

Walking Around Shining Like the Sun

Readings for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22 This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday October 16, 2011. In a few weeks, many of us will greet a variety of familiar and perhaps frightening faces at our door, […]

Grace That Saves a Kvetch Like Me

Readings for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 16:2-15 Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16 This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday September 18, 2011 Over the last few years, I have grown in appreciation of all things Yiddish, especially the language. Not only do I love […]

Ember Letter: Holy Cross Day 2011

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, I hope this Ember letter finds you well and that you are enjoying “the mystery of our redemption” on this Holy Cross Day. As I reflect on Christ’s power to draw all people to himself when lifted up from the earth, I recall the various gatherings that I have […]

Walter Wink and War and Peace

In exploring the ethical dimensions of war and peace, biblical scholar and theologian Walter Wink offers an approach that provides a helpful “grammar” for understanding the complexity and opacity of human violence. As an alternative to the Ancient Worldview (in which all things in earth are mirrored in heaven), the Spiritualist Worldview (in which […]

Sin is behovely, but…

As a freshman at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, I sat in a classroom that usually pulsated with nervous excitement and energy due to weekly quizzes and a desire to impress fellow classmates with profound comments and questions. However, on this particular day, the class sat hushed under a dark cloud of somber uncertainty. The […]

A Poem for Labor Day

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. […]

Ember Letter: Pentecost 2011

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, I pray that you are having a transformative and inspiring Pentecost in sunny Los Angeles. And in the spirit of Pentecost, I hope that this Ember Letter captures some of the energy of my spiritual journey the way an “ember” contains the energy of a fire. I have been […]

Receiving the Hyssop: Reading the Johannine Passion as Pastoral Theodicy

My spiritual journey has been both plagued and propelled by the question of suffering. The theological dilemma posed more than 2000 years ago by the Greek philosopher Epicurus still baffles theologians today: How do we reconcile an all-loving and all-powerful God with a world of suffering? My call to the priesthood and to pastoral ministry […]