The Beauty of Pentecost: the Tzitzit
When I was in graduate school, we were laboring one day over a prickly translation issue in “The Prayer of Manasseh,” a short book of just 15 verses that has been in the Bible, and then not in the Bible over the centuries. Manasseh was probably Israel’s most wicked king (2 Chronicles 33). Allegedly,…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost – We Live by Gift, not Grasp
Walter Brueggemann, whom I’d count as our world’s greatest Old Test ament scholar, has published a little book, Virus as a Summons to Faith. It’s a little series of in-depth Bible studies. He explains why this might help: “I, as a Bible teacher, believe that any serious crisis is a summons for us to…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost – Why Should I Be Discouraged?
Three weeks ago in worship, a fabulous soloist sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” When I was young, I thought this was a corny song, although I listened patiently to older church members who were mortified it was not included in the newfangled Methodist hymnal (that c ame out in 1966!). Thankfully I’ve fallen…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost – Collective Joy
This Sunday, we’ll celebrate Holy Communion – via computer. Get your bread and grape juice or wine organized ahead of time so we can share in our Lord’s table together – virtually, which is precisely as together as we are with Jesus and the disciples over there and back then. At that Last Supper, Jesus…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost: God and the Pandemic
N.T. Wright, arguably the world’s best known and wisest New Test ament scholar, just published a little book of biblical and theological reflections on the pandemic. Let me share his best thoughts. Noting the frontline workers, and how retired doctors and nurses returned to work – and some of them have died! – Wright…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost: the Good Death
Drew Gilpin Faust, President Emeritus of Harvard, wrote the award-winning This Republic of Suffering, a book I greatly admire. She ex amines what dying far from home was like for the 600,000 soldiers killed in the Civil War, and for their f amilies. The ideal in those days was that one should have a…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost: The Power of One
I suspect that when most of us ponder what’s going on out there in the world, it’s simply overwhelming. Numbing. You might have a rabble-rouser, change-the-world bone or two in your body, but it’s so massive, the mess. No wonder we just feel adrift, or useless. No wonder so many just withdraw. Like the…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost – the Freedom to Be Free
I can’t decide if I prefer the Eagles or Linda Ronstadt singing “Desperado.” I love the line “Freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talking, your prison is walking through this world all alone.” Freedom, if you ponder it a while, isn’t just doing whatever I want to do – which is its…
Learn MoreThe Beauty of Pentecost: Good Choices
Eight days ago, in the sermon, mention was made of a poignant interaction between Elena Richardson, a wealthy white woman (played by Reese Witherspoon) and Mia Warren, a struggling African american woman (played by Kerry Washington) in Little Fires Everywhere. With not very subtle condescension, Elena declares to Mia, “A good mother makes good…
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