As Advent begins, I wonder how Christ can be born again in our time and in our culture. Yet Luke starts his story by noting that Quirinius was governor of Syria, and he made Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem because Augustus declared a change in the tax plan. They were surrounded by wars...
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Though I preached this sermon only a couple of days ago, the events of the week have continued to unfold. Rather than try to update it, I will let it stand as its own little time capsule, even as I continue to figure out how to respond to what is happening around us. “Two...
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I know. It’s Tuesday. Suffice it to say there has been a lot going on. I’m still looking at sight and the way Jesus healed blind people. Bruce Corley was one of my New Testament professors in seminary. I loved his classes. He began our discussion of Jesus’ miracles by saying we should read...
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I didn’t write last week because I was listening. Ginger and I spent the week in San Antonio at the Festival of Homiletics, or Preacher Geek Camp, as Ginger likes to call it. The week was inspiring, challenging, and invigorating. I came back with both my mind and my heart feeling stretched. Before I...
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Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56; Matthew 9:18-26 From time to time, my father’s words come floating back to the surface unexpectedly. Each time I feel more grateful that it happened. This week, as I thought about the story of these two people who came separately to Jesus, but whose stories are intertwined, I could hear...
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Uncle Howard and I met for breakfast again this morning, as has been my lenten custom thus far, and he woke me with these words: Again and again, we are impressed with the fact that little things can make big differences. A little act of kindness at a moment of great need makes all...
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I read some more of Howard Thurman’s Deep is the Hunger on the train to New York this morning, and found myself trying to imagine what he sounded like by the tone of his writing, which has a centering nature about it. I called my friend Kenny tonight, who studied with Thurman in the...
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Howard Thurman was my traveling companion on the train to work this morning, and he greeted me with these words: It is small wonder that all religions that are ethically sensitive place a great emphasis upon the corrosive effects of pride upon the human spirit. . . . The most obvious basis for pride...
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A good twenty years ago, I was sitting in my car at a traffic signal on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, waiting for the light to change so I could cross the bridge over the rail yard and back to our home in Charlestown. I looked up to see a billboard that read, Come see...
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My day started with jolts from both my morning coffee and, then, these words from Howard Thurman: The will to understand other people is a most important part of the personal equipment of those who would share in the unfolding idea of human fellowship. It is not enough merely to be sincere, to be...
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