Category: Theological Animation

His Faith Demanded It

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

ConeFrom James Cone’s The Cross and The Lynching Tree (2013):

Just as Jesus knew he could be executed when he went to Jerusalem, Martin Luther King, Jr., knew that threats against his life could be realized in Memphis.  Like Jesus’ disciples who rejected the idea that his mission entailed his suffering and death (Mk 8:31-32), nearly everyone in King’s organization vigorously opposed his journey to Memphis, not only because of the dangers but because of the need to focus on the coming Poor People’s Campaign in Washington.  But King, like Jesus, felt he had no choice: he had to go to Memphis and aid the garbage workers in their struggle for dignity, better wages, and a safer work place.  He had to go because his faith demanded it.

Crossing the Desert

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

reedBy Dee Dee Risher

The aboriginal people of the Kalahari desert break and bury ostrich shells in the sand. The extreme temperatures cause condensation inside the eggshells. As the nomads move over the desert, they survive by drawing drops of moisture from these shells with reeds.

You must prepare well,
Rise in the knowing dark,
Go down to the river,
And listen to the reeds.
A single one will call you.
Listen. Continue reading “Crossing the Desert” →

Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily

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

skunk_cabbage.jpgEaster, Year B
Acts 10:34-43
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
John 20:1-18
Mark 16:1-8

By Jessica Miller

Across the northeast of North America at this season, a wonder is happening. The flowers of Symplocarpus foetidus have begun emerging and blooming from swamps and wet places. These true Easter-lilies—members of the same family of the Calla ‘lily’—are more commonly known as skunk-cabbage. Varieties of the plant also grow in Japan, where the red robe-like blossoms resembling a monk’s hood have gained it the name Zazen-sou, or Zen meditation plant.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily” →

Ratzlaff Review: Justice & Only Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

VernAnother short and sweet book review-summary from legendary pastor Vern Ratzlaff, posting up on the Canadian prairies, pouring his heart and mind into anti-imperial theology and soul-tending. 

Justice and Only Justice. Naim Ateek, Orbis, 1989.

Ateek is (Anglican) canon of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and pastors its Arabaic speaking congregation. The claim for security for the one people, the Israeli Jews, has been purchased at the expense of the just claims to the land of another people, the Palestinians. In Ateek’s words, the Israeli Jews seek peace with security, and the Palestinians seek peace with justice. Continue reading “Ratzlaff Review: Justice & Only Justice” →

Resurrection’s Approach AND Commentary on the March For Our Lives

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A Prayer and Commentary from Ken Sehested

Resurrection's approach.jpeg

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be:
Commentary on the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, DC
Saturday 24 March 2018

I am not ashamed to admit it. They made me do it. Cry. More than once. “They” being the uncommonly common students who led the March For Our Lives rally—three-quarters of a million strong—in Washington, DC. The day may well be accounted as among the most significant in our nation’s history. Continue reading “Resurrection’s Approach AND Commentary on the March For Our Lives” →

Seraphim Serpents, Bronze Gifts, and Saving Sights

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

CrossBy Jim Perkinson, a sermon on John 3: 14-21 and Numbers 21:4-9 (March 11, 2018, St. Peter’s Episcopal, Detroit, MI)

The sermon begins today with this year’s early advent of the parade for St. Patrick. The sea of green we already witnessing this morning provides interesting backdrop for the lectionary readings. In mainstream Christian invocation, Patrick is remembered for clearing the snakes from Ireland and often depicted as such, with crozier in hand and coiled serpents at his feet. Patrick mastered the slithering ones. But for our purposes here, it is important likewise to lift up Afro-diaspora creativity with the Gaelic saint and his serpents. In colonized Haiti, the displaced slaves amalgamated their traditional Yoruban-Dahomean-Congolese spiritual practices with the Roman Catholic orthodoxy into which they were forced. For them, the depiction of the snake-mastering Patrick “spoke” of Damballah, the Creator-Serpent-Spirit (or Loa, in their terminology) whose surreptitious presence they saw “mounting” Patrick in possession and using his snake proclivity to express something quite different. Far from banning the Serpent Power, for the creolized community of the French colony, Patrick became the host body for this African indigenous spirit-guide. The Snake mastered Patrick. And something like that intuition will help us open the Hebrew text to its indigenous root this morning. Continue reading “Seraphim Serpents, Bronze Gifts, and Saving Sights” →

40 Birds of Lent: Final Count

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Theological Animation, Watershed Discipleship2 Comments

Laurel1By Laurel Dykstra

While the word Lent comes from Middle English, quadragesima, the Latin word for the season means fortieth referring to the fortieth day before Easter. And while this resonates with a host of biblical wilderness forties—the 40 days of the flood, the Hebrew’s 40 year sojourn in the desert, Moses’ 40 days on Sinai, Elijah’s 40 day journey to Mt. Horeb, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness—the actual number of days doesn’t quite add up, so different traditions have different metrics, (don’t count Sundays, Lent ends on Maundy Thursday) in order to get to 40. I love the biblical associations but the 40 Birds of Lent involved some cheating to make the numbers come out right.
Continue reading “40 Birds of Lent: Final Count” →

The Ways

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment
Japan-1
PC: Michael Raymond Smith

By Tommy Airey

Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.
John 20:25

In order to believe (Greek pistis), Thomas had to see and touch the brutal wounds inflicted by empire. Belief, for the first radical disciples, was far more than head knowledge. It was about what one pledged allegiance to, who one was willing to suffer and die for. Thomas wasn’t going down with some crazy-ass conspiracy theory about Jesus the tortured-and-crucified freedom fighter coming back from the dead.   Continue reading “The Ways” →

Bright Sadness

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indexA litany for Lent, to be read while “How Can I Keep From Singing” is played in the background, after which the congregation sings one or more verse of the song

by Ken Sehested

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the season of Lent is described as a “bright sadness.”

In the sadness that surrounds our lives, our community, our world, we give thanks, nevertheless. More is at work than we can see. Continue reading “Bright Sadness” →

Digging In

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

EucharistLast month, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries hosted its annual Kinsler Institute in Southern California’s Ventura River Watershed (right). This year’s theme was “Digging In: Heels, Histories, Hearts,” an exploration of the roots of individual and collective stories and an examination of what it takes to recover from addictions and renew spirits for long term healing and movement building (all photos from Clancy Dunigan).

The reviews are sprouting forth, testifying to a mind-blowing and heart-expanding week.

From Grace Aheron, a poet, pastor and gardener living on 8 acres of land in an intentional community in the vicarage of a rural Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Continue reading “Digging In” →