Proper 12(7) C
By Lini Hutchings
O God, come to our aid.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the One who is making the heavens and the earth
and to the One who comes in solidarity to heal all division,
and to the One who sustains us in the Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Swimming in the Wastestream”
By Kyle Mitchell
I work on a farm and do a lot of farm-based education with youth. One of my weekly joys right now is walking the farm and leading kids on a tasting tour. We try carrots, sorrel, sugar snap peas, mint, cucumbers, blue borage flowers – which taste like cucumbers oddly enough. I point to a potato plant and ask kids to guess what the plant is. They guess – An apple plant? Tomato? Lettuce? When I dig down with the garden fork and begin to pull up on the plant, I can barely hold in my excitement. I know the squeals and gasps that will shortly ensue when they realize that, “it’s potatoes!” “Can we eat them?” Wait, no, we need to cook them first, I think? Mental note for later, “Google ‘can you eat raw potatoes’”. Continue reading “You Must Be Re-Natured”
An Announcement from the Kings Bay Plowshares 7:
Hiroshima Day August 6th through Nagasaki Day August 9th in solidarity with the KINGS BAY PLOWSHARES 7
A FAST FOR PEACE
in defense of life and against nuclear weapons.
We suggest the following calendar:
Monday Aug 5: Arrive
Tuesday Aug 6: 8am-10am Fast/Vigil at Kings Bay Submarine base
Wednesday Aug 7: Fast/Vigil at Brunswick, GA courthouse, beginning at 8:00 a.m.
Thursday August 8: Fast/Vigil at sites in Brunswick, GA
Friday August 9: Fast/Vigil at Kings Bay Submarine Base
Saturday Aug 10: Depart Continue reading “A Fast For Peace”
An excerpt from The Sun Magazine‘s 2018 interview with poet and professor Camille Dungy.
I am a Christian who is sad that it is often difficult for me to say that I am a Christian. I believe in what I understand to be the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ: Love one another, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Justice and care and dangerous, radical kindness — I believe in all that. But I don’t believe that there is just one “right” Church. And I don’t believe in waiting to go to heaven to get my due…I’m going to fight for my due here and now, and for my daughter’s due. This is the only version of heaven that my God has given me, so this is where I am going to do my work. Continue reading “The Only Version of Heaven my God Has Given Me”
By Laurel Dykstra, on Luke 10:38-42
*Note: this Radical Discipleship classic was originally posted in July 2016.
I don’t like the story of Mary and Martha.
Most of us already know if we are more like Mary, who sits at Jesus’ feet, or more like Martha, who is distracted by her many tasks. And it seems to me that no matter how nice they try to be about it, most of the sermons and commentaries on this passage seem to say, “Yay Mary and Boo Martha” Continue reading “Mary and Martha”
Proper 11(16)
Genesis 18:1-10a
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42
By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie
When I first looked at these readings, it was the day when the UN High Commission on Refugees released the latest figures. “An unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.” The agency also reported that “There are also millions of stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.”
Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Remembering to listen in turbulent times”
By Shelby Smith
On June 8th I was baptized by my home church, the Wilderness Way Community in Portland, OR. I was asked to reflect on why I was choosing to be baptized.
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”—Micah 6:8
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”—Phil 4:13
The Bible and its legacy is full of contradictions and conflicts and also beauty and strength. In 2014, when I came to Wilderness Way I found myself feeling dry and broken. That feeling was an extended phase that continued for some time. I had a relationship with God but Jesus and Christianity was completely off the table. Except the occasional times when I would pick up the Bible, read some passages—and feel disgusted or bored or confused and walk away again. I wrestled with a lot of shoulds, anger and fears. I struggled to do justice, to love kindness and the walk humbly with God. I struggled acutely with all three of these. Continue reading “This Baptism”
By Tommy Airey, on the Parable of the Good Samaritan
When the lawyer finally got face-time with Jesus, he poured out what was heaviest on his heart, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He groped for a guarantee. He wanted a divine will and testament. He was begging for a bill of rights.
As usual, Jesus pivoted on freedom. He was never much into being The Bible Answer Man. He asked the lawyer how he interpreted the sacred text. The lawyer’s answer, according to Jesus, was spot-on. Eternity’s most valuable asset has nothing to do with where we go when we die. It is a gut-busting love for both our higher power and our lowly neighbors. Right here. Right now. Continue reading “Bound By Love”
By Ric Hudgens
In this apocalyptic age where if the politics don’t kill you the ecology will, I am pondering a distinction made three decades ago by the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin. Wolin distinguished between a politics of intending and tending. Comparing these two modes of thinking Wolin saw one as prone to control and power and the other as a means of attention and care.*
The politics of intention requires power, as we strain toward a future that is not yet guaranteed. Continue reading “Collapse, Part II”
By Ched Myers, a short commentary on this weekend’s Gospel Story (Luke 10:25-37; right: “The Good Samaritan” by Paula Modersohn-Becker)
Note: This piece was originally posted on Radical Discipleship on July 7, 2016.
The famous Parable of the Good Samaritan is often sentimentalized, but its subversive character and genuine profundity can never be exhausted. It comes on the heels of Jesus’ sending out of the “seventy,” and his long “missionary discourse” (Lk 10:1-24). How different the history of Christianity would have been had disciples in every age followed these relatively simple but incisive instructions to travel with the gospel in a vulnerable and provisional mode, rather than a dominating one! But if the unholy joining of mission and empire has been the first pillar of Christendom’s apostasy, surely the second has been the church’s tendency to define faith through dogma. It is this religious bad habit that Luke addresses in this Sunday’s parable. Continue reading “To Do Is To Know”
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