Jesus the Preacher
From three years ago, a prayer in response to Luke 4.14-30: When you preached favor for “us,” we spoke well of you. But when you preached favor for “them,” we were ready to throw you off a cliff. What did you feel…
Incarnational Mission
The day he rose from the dead Jesus found his disciples locked away from the world. Peter and John hadn’t stayed out long enough that morning to meet Jesus as he strolled about. The risk was too great that what…
Jesus Got Shot for You: The Gospel in Contemporary Images (or An Extended Allusion to Romans 1-8)
Walter Scott and Eric Harris, both unarmed black men fleeing from police, were shot and killed in the span of six days at the beginning of April. The officers who shot them have each been charged with crimes, and the…
Marching for the Guilty
Tomorrow I am going to march through St. Louis to mourn injustice. The Mourning March has been organized as a prayer of lament to gather the sorrow of our city and direct it to God. We’re marching on Holy Saturday,…
When I Die: Interpretation
Since a few people have described my last post as bizarre (in fact, one commenter was writing that very word into a comment as I was typing this sentence), I thought an explanation might be in order. The previous post…
Pastors of the Scattered Flock
We recently finished watching The War, a Ken Burns documentary that is about as long as World War II itself was. The sheer number of people killed was unimaginable. An estimated 50-60 million worldwide lost their lives. The economics of…
Being a Neighbor
If you’ve been following this sporadically updated blog, you know that I am a part of an effort to plant a community of missionaries in Alton, IL. I have written about the conviction that developed in me last summer that…
Suffering and Fate
There’s a phrase that has been rattling around in my head for about a year: He suffered the same fate as us. It has come to shape the way I make decisions, especially difficult ones. Jesus did not save us…
Keep the Whole Law
St. Paul wanted to convince the Galatians not to get circumcised, which you would think wouldn’t be that hard to do. Just a simple diagram is all it would take, with big letters at the top: “Really?!?” Controversy over! In…
Another One Bites the Dust
Somewhere in a corner of a neighborhood in transition in St. Louis a small group of weary travelers voted to disband their church. I knew it was coming. I mean, I didn’t know that it was going to be this…
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