I’ve always loved watching a campfire, how the flames dance up into the night sky. In the Biblical age, fire provided any light at night, made possible every cooked meal, kept people warm, and forged pottery or metal. As a child hearing the Pentecost story, I got lost in the wonder of the tongues of […]
Dear Belmont Friends, Last week, after 52 years of language incompatible with God’s boundless grace and love, our United Methodist Church General Conference removed the harmful language from our Book of Discipline. We no longer name some of God’s beloved children as incompatible. The UMC no longer bars churches or pastors from celebrating same sex […]
Thursday morning, I walked to the Charlotte Convention Center. In the predawn light, you could hear the birds singing their songs of praise. On Wednesday, I was privileged to be on the floor voting as The General Conference of the United Methodist Church made history by removing the harmful exclusionary language. We now properly declare […]
Last weekend, I joined our confirmation retreat along with 14 seventh and eighth graders. Our teens asked great questions like “why is our denomination splitting up?” I felt drawn to the whiteboard and with help from Faith Friend Dr. Michael Stephens I drew a timeline of church splits: Christianity from Judaism 45AD, Roman Catholic […]
Sometimes you’ll pick up a scholarly article or a legal contract and it will begin with a glossary defining unfamiliar words or technical terms. Some words like love or hate may be used so widely that knowing just what someone means when they say “I love that” is not that clear. If you tried to […]
Last Tuesday, after what we church workers call Easter Monday, I looked at my sermon text and I wondered why I laid out a sermon series rooted in First John. Unlike most of the Bible, First John does not tell a story, at least not in a traditional sense with a storyline, plot, and characters. […]
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could anoint Jesus’ body. Just after sunrise, they came to the tomb. They came as soon as the Sabbath laws allowed. Magdalene, Mary, and Salome carried spices, lotions, oils, soaps, and towels to wash Jesus’ bloodied […]
Even before the palm branches are swept from the parade route, Palm Sunday makes a hard pivot into Holy Week The crowds come singing loud Hosannas, lifting up Hallelujahs and praises to Christ our Lord as Jesus rides towards the Temple with the other Passover Pilgrims who walk upward to Zion. Some of the people […]
Last Wednesday, Hunter, Sol, Mercede and I worked on building an irrigation path to divert groundwater away from a home and towards a catch basin. There was not a nice stack of matching concrete pavers from Home Depot but instead a pile of preindustrial stones collected from nearby fields. Each rock had its own size, […]
Mark tells no back stories: no theological images like John, no genealogy like Matthew, and no birth narrative like Luke. Mark begins with John the Baptist. Jesus was about 30 years old, the age when many men got married, when he decided to travel to the Judean wilderness to hear John the Baptist preach. John […]
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