Author: RadicalDiscipleship

The Immigrants’ Creed

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Theological Animation1 Comment

ImmigrationBy Jose Luis Casal, excerpted from The Book of Common Worship: 2018 Edition. © 2018 Westminster John Knox Press.

I believe in Almighty God,
who guided the people in exile and in exodus,
the God of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon,
the God of foreigners and immigrants.

I believe in Jesus Christ, a displaced Galilean,
who was born away from his people and his home, who fled
his country with his parents when his life was in danger.
When he returned to his own country he suffered under the oppression of Pontius Pilate,
the servant of a foreign power. Jesus was persecuted, beaten, tortured, and unjustly
condemned to death.
But on the third day Jesus rose from the dead,
not as a scorned foreigner but to offer us citizenship in God’s kingdom. Continue reading “The Immigrants’ Creed” →

Joy’s ascendance, This stuff could get you in trouble

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Ken Sehested

“For Jesus, there are
no countries to be conquered,
no ideologies to be imposed,
no people to be dominated.
There are only children,
women and men to be loved.”
—Henri Nouwen

Yes. This. Of course. No doubt about it.
I stake everything on this claim. Continue reading “Joy’s ascendance, This stuff could get you in trouble” →

Connoisseur

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

indexBy Kate Foran

For Steve

Your appetite has a reputation of its own. Dinner hosts glow as you ask for seconds and thirds and they marvel that a person of your moderate size can put so much away. You must have several hollow limbs, they wonder, and you offer your compliments to the chef, tasting everything again. Before you go to a party you “pre-eat,” you say, so as not to embarrass yourself. You remember your life as a series of meals—the loaf of bread Mrs. DiMartino baked you for your seventh birthday, the pasta your grandmother made and draped over chairs and towel racks in the kitchen, the collards and fried chicken you ate with gusto, to the delight of the local cook in Memphis. You never encountered a meal you didn’t like. Continue reading “Connoisseur” →

The Battle for the Bible

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

BindingWe continue our celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel.  Today, as the lectionary once again pivots to the Gospel of John, we share an excerpt from Binding, in which Reagan-era Ched clarifies the ideological nature of interpretation–almost thirty years before 81% of white Evangelicals voted for Trump.

The truth is, the “battle for the Bible” today has increasingly less to do with theological divisions and allegiances and more to do with political and economic allegiances.  This is perhaps more evident in many Third World countries, where churches are becoming polarized along class and ideological lines.  In Latin America, for example, we see the base communities empowering the poor masses through a more popular model of church.  This predominantly Catholic movement has, with almost Protestant fervor, restored Bible study, along with grass-roots social analysis, to a central place in the life of the community.  In stark contrast stand the words of Pope John Paul II in his opening address to the Puebla episcopal conference in 1979: Continue reading “The Battle for the Bible” →

The Erotic

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire1 Comment

AudreAn excerpt from Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic.”

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. Continue reading “The Erotic” →

The Resistance We Want to See

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Sabbath Economics, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Wrecking BallToday, we highlight the subversive, sacrificial decision made by Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters in San Francisco. They turned down a $40,000 contract for a large conference because the company contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to help with the agency’s recruiting and “drive efficiencies around how U.S. border activities are managed.” Below are a few excerpts from a recent article in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters gets opportunities to brew thousands of cups of coffee at massive conferences only a few times a year. So when George P. Johnson Experience Marketing, which contracts with Salesforce to provide catering services for Dreamforce, reached out to Wrecking Ball owners Nick Cho and Trish Rothgeb, the two said they eagerly entered into discussion. Continue reading “The Resistance We Want to See” →

Wild Lectionary: Of Raspberries and Eternal Life

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

August 5-18 picProper 13B, Year B
August 5th, 2018

John 6:24-35

By Svinda Heinrichs

I pondered the Gospel of John passage for this Sunday as I took a walk down the hill into the ever-expanding raspberry patch in the field to the place where the raspberry bushes and forest meet. I ate my fill of the red, juicy, sweet bursts of sunshine and made my way back up the hill marvelling at how the shrubbery had grown up over the two years since we cleared the space to make a better view for ourselves. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Of Raspberries and Eternal Life” →

I Am Wind

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation1 Comment

JPerk1By Jim Perkinson, a sermon on John 6:1-12 for the radical disciples who gather at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Detroit (July 29, 2018)

I preached here earlier this year on Jonah and fish and began that sermon by saying “I am not a fish person.” But then offered that fish were central to the gospel, that Jonah had in fact been saved by a fish, that fish were on par with bread in feeding the multitudes in the wilderness, and that Jesus was even called, in subsequent tradition (notably North African theologian Tertullian) “The Great Fish.” Continue reading “I Am Wind” →

Raising Boys

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

20180722_114619By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Published in Geez Magazine‘s most recent issue on Gender Flex.

“Mommy, baby is tired. I need to put baby in the pack and walk,” says Cedar, my two-year-old. I quickly design a make shift baby carrier tying his baby doll to his stomach. He walks back and forth across the house and then stops and sways. After five minutes, he heavy sighs and says disappointedly “baby is still awake.” He walks on mumbling to himself about how baby needs his milk and how the baby is too little to drink water out of a cup and baby just needs his milk. Continue reading “Raising Boys” →

Choose Life

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

20180713_100030By Katerina Friesen

Praising/ Adoring
We are Your field, O Lord,
and we praise You as Your planting, the work of Your hands!
We praise You for Your watchful eye,
for the way You bend over us and smile
as we grow from tender stems to ripe harvest,
for giving us rain and sun in due season.
We praise You because You never give up on us,
but coax new life from barren ground again and again.
We are Your field, O Lord,
and we praise You as Your planting, the work of Your hands!

Affirming Faith
Voices 1: We will not bow down to serve other gods:
the gods of war, the gods of greed, the gods who destroy the Earth.
Voices 2: We will not bow down to the gods of racism,
to gods who make us feel either inferior or superior,
to gods who do not love us, but demand our devotion.
All: We choose life!
Voices 1: We choose to serve the God of Abraham, and Isaac,
the God of Sarah and Rebecca, of Mary and of Jesus,
Voices 2: We choose to serve the God of our ancestors in faith,
of Paul and Lydia, of Menno Simons and Margaretha Sattler,
of Vincent and Rosemarie Harding.
All: We choose life! We will hold fast to the Lord, the God of life.

Sending
God has set before us today life and death. Let us continue
to walk in God’s way, assured that our ancestors walk before us,
that Christ walks with us, and that the Spirit binds us together
and helps us to choose life.