Theological Animation

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Wild Lectionary: Another World Is Possible

ClimateStrike20190927-02

Photo Credit Brynn Craffey, Vancouver Climate Strike, 2019

Proper 28 (33) C
Isaiah 65:17-25

By Brynn Craffey

This week’s first Lectionary reading from Isaiah features a vision of the Almighty who promises to create, “new heavens and a new earth,” in which, “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Restoration is a theme running through Isaiah, and today’s passage conjures up visions of utopia in my soul. I imagine old paradigms collapsing, social justice replacing unfairness throughout the land, and communally supported programs, such as Medicare for All and robustly-funded public health care systems, ensuring that, “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”  

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Wild Lectionary: This House in its Former Glory

256px-Burlington_Heights_looking_south

Harlington Heights, looking south David A. Galbraith, CC

Proper 27(32)C
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 98

By Sandy Reynolds

I am often confronted with the destruction of the natural world from my backyard. I live near the escarpment trails that run through the city of Hamilton, Ontario. On a clear day, you can see across the bay to the CN Tower in Toronto. Frequently the view is hazy and the landmarks in the distant are barely visible. Looking through the all too familiar yellow-tinged smog I try to imagine what this land was like when it was pristine. Before my people came. Continue reading →

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A Word to White Men

BWKBy Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, presented at the inaugural Council on the Way convened by Ruby Sales in Washington D.C. on October 19, 2019

You, White men, Christian and not, sit in darkness, unseeing how you are advantaged by aggression against others. Your humanity suffers a gaping wound you have been taught not to feel. You are justified by a faith that is an idol and a lie. You are in bondage to a system and a spirit, white supremacy, which is nothing less than a form of death itself. Continue reading →

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Deep Love

Kings BayBy Tommy Airey

Lindsay shot me a text last Friday afternoon. KingsBay7 all found guilty of all the charges. She concluded with crying emojis. The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 is a motley crew of older white Christians who, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, broke into a Naval base in Georgia with hammers, crime scene tape, baby bottles containing their own blood, and an indictment charging the U.S. government with crimes against peace. ¡Personas peligrosos!

The Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines, each of which carries 20 Trident thermonuclear weapons—possessed with 3,800 times more destructive power as the weapons that were used on Hiroshima. Hammers? They were literally following the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” They discerned the action after two years of prayer and practice. This was a deep symbolic action designed to penetrate souls. Continue reading →

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Wild Lectionary: Saving Corporate Lostness

IMG_4227Proper 26(31)
Luke 19:1-10

By The Rev. Marilyn Zehr

19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.
– Luke 19:10

If the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost, who could be more lost than large corporations whose actions defile the earth and her creatures? But wouldn’t corporations need to be “people” in order to be saved? Apparently in the USA, corporate personhood is a thing. Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons. Continue reading →

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Wild Lectionary: Insect Armies and Fearful Soil

37661337_684148725265061_5398280923315699712_oProper 25(30)C

Joel 2:23-32

By Laurel Dykstra

In the Christian bible the book of Joel is three chapters long, in the Jewish bible four.

Joel describes a years long plague of locusts in military language. The people are exhorted to fast, pray and repent from ambiguous transgressions. An oracle of consolation—divine promise of restoration–is followed by a raw prayer of revenge equating Israel’s restoration with the defeat and humiliation of surrounding empires.

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