Magi's Journey, Our Journey (Sermon preached 3 January 2021)

I am pretty sure that it was not during the first week in my systematic theology class that the professor, who also happened to be the academic dean, began his systematic destruction of sacred cows. You know what I mean by sacred cows, right? Those cherished, long held and unquestioned tenets of our faith that we had all brought along with us as we began our seminary studies.

 

But definitely by the end of the second week he had started dismantling beliefs that we had always simply accepted as “true”. “Every point of view is a view from a point,”  he would say as he separated us from what we took to be undisputed aspects of the faith. And showed us how they were, in fact, time-bound and contextual. It didn’t mean they weren’t true, necessarily, Just maybe true in a different way. (read more)

All Mary All the Time (Sermon preached 20 December 2020)

 If I tell you that today, the fourth Sunday of Advent, is Mary Sunday – which means it’s all Mary, all the time; with the Magnificat taking the place of the Psalm, and the Annunciation as the Gospel story… and if I tell you that this sermon is going to be all about what this teen-aged peasant girl has to teach us about spiritual power…and if I tell you that that means taking a deep dive into topics like receptivity and gestation and giving birth to God…

If I tell you all that, you just might start thinking that this is one of those times when a woman preacher is going to make up for all of those sermons about fishermen and tax collectors and prodigal sons and good Samaritans and laborers in vineyards. All of those men who take up most of the space in the Gospel stories we hear...(read more)