Category: Theological Animation

The Anti-Trump

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

rileyBy Tommy Airey, a letter to his nephews who call him “Uncle Coo-Coo”

Riley and Mason,

I want so badly for you to grow up with a deep awareness of what it means to be “a real man.” You have a big advantage because you have parents and a Nawny who are committed to recovery: fearless and thorough in their commitments to mutual and rigorous honesty, to establishing boundaries and assertiveness and to pursuing gentleness with themselves and others in the process.  They have been important models in my own journey of re-claiming open-heartedness and emotional expressiveness.

Unfortunately, the man who gets the most attention, who you will see over and over on TV and the internet, whose name you will hear about more than any other man on the planet is a President who lives off a steady diet of name-calling and fear-mongering, who paints those from south of the border as “criminals” and “rapists” and says if refugees from Muslim-majority countries “are allowed in, it’s death and destruction!,” who magnifies deeply ingrained racial stereotypes of inner-cities as “in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested),” whose whole ethos is shaped by bullying and “locker room talk” and whose policies favor the securing of enormous profits for a few over relieving the suffering of everyday people. Continue reading “The Anti-Trump” →

Sermon: Grounded in the Bedrock of Faith

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

beatitutudesBy Joyce Hollyday. January 29, 2017,
Circle of Mercy, Asheville, NC

Micah 6:8; Matthew 5:1-12

On the night of January 19th, the eve of the inauguration, several of us from Circle of Mercy’s immigration mission group gathered at the home that Bill and I share. We kept a vigil in the tradition of the Watch Night Service.

Watch Night is typically traced back to New Year’s Eve of 1862, when enslaved communities stayed up all night waiting for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect on January 1st. When I was collecting oral histories among African-American UCC churches during my time as an associate conference minister, I was told that the custom is actually much older—that enslaved families stayed up every New Year’s Eve, because January 1st was when masters decided whom they would sell off. Families facing the imminent threat of separation spent all night singing and praying and hoping that they would be together for another year. Continue reading “Sermon: Grounded in the Bedrock of Faith” →

I Was A Stranger

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment
martinFrom the Facebook page of Fr. James Martin:
President Trump has announced that he will order the construction of a Mexican border wall, the first in a series of actions to crack down on immigrants, which will include slashing the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States, and blocking Syrians and others from what are called “terror-prone nations” from entering, at least temporarily.

These measures, which mean the rejection of the stranger, the rejection of the person in need, the rejection of those who suffer, are manifestly unchristian and utterly contrary to the Gospel. Indeed, last year, Pope Francis said, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the Gospel.”  

Continue reading “I Was A Stranger” →

Sojourners in Our Midst

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Theological AnimationLeave a comment
undocumented
Art by Julio Salgado

From the introduction to Ched Myers’ “A House For All Peoples?  A Bible Study on Welcoming the Outsider” (2006):

There have always been two Americas: that of rich and poor, of inclusion and exclusion. The America of inclusion found expression in the ideal of “liberty and justice for all,” and has been embodied whenever Indian treaties were honored, and in the embrace of civil rights, women’s suffrage, or child labor laws. The America of exclusion, on the other hand, was articulated in a Constitution that originally enfranchised only white landed males and has been realized in land grabs, Jim Crow segregation, Gilded Age economic stratification, and restrictive housing covenants.

These two visions of America continually compete for our hearts and minds, not least in our churches. On one side are the voices of Emma Lazarus in her poem “The New Colossus” (“Give me your tired, your poor…”), and Martin Luther King Jr. when he preached “I Have a Dream.” On the other side are those of George W. Bush’s imperial politics and James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family.” Click HERE to read the whole article.

 

 

 

 

Wild Lectionary: Holy Fools

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

holyfoolimagewquote32.jpg4th Sunday after Epiphany

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

by Tevyn East and Jay Beck, excerpted from Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice

The Catholic Feast of Fools was a day for liturgical dramas that dissolved church hierarchy, celebrated becoming a “Fool for Christ” (1 Cor) and enacted the Magnificat’s call to turn society upside down (Luke 1:52–53). This feast day was later suppressed by authorities lived on for centuries within medieval folk culture. Europeans eventually brought many such religious festivities to the New World under the common label “carnival.” Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Holy Fools” →

Wild Lectionary: Under the Cover of His Tent

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment
dsc02678-768x576
Great American Backyard Campout photo credit: Chattahoochee Nature Center

3rd Sunday after Epiphany

One thing I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent: he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.  -Psalm 27:4-6

By Sarah Thompson and Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, excerpted from Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice

Sarah: Connecting people to land connects us with one another, enabling us to re-knit kinship ties that were broken by enslavement. In the Diaspora, Black folks have had a primarily extractive relationship with the land, and later in industrial factories. We were seen as people whose worth was in our productive capacity, but beyond that, as disposable. It is easy to understand, therefore, why we have had an extractive relationship with one another, and use a lot of disposable things. But this cycle is spiritually devastating. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Under the Cover of His Tent” →

21 Running, Working, Experiential Definitions of Mysticism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

meditationFrom Matthew Fox’s The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (1988):

By exposure to each of these “definitions” the reader will begin to feel and make connections with his or her own mysticism, for the purpose of defining mysticism here is to elicit the mystic within each person…

  1. Experience: a trust of the universe, a trust of what is and what occurs to us, yes, a trust of oneself
  2. Non dualism: the end of alienation and the beginning of communion, the end of either/or relationships and the beginning of unity
  3. Compassion: “the keen awareness of the interdependence of all living things which are all part of one another and involved in one another” (Thomas Merton)
  4. Connection Making:  by symbols, stories, myths, music and colors, form and ritual–we connect with one another’s deep and often unspoken experiences of life’s mysteries
  5. Radical Amazement: awe is the opposite of taking life for granted
  6. Affirmation of the World as a Whole:  neither neutral nor bitter or cynical
  7. Right-Brain: synthesis over analysis and verbalization

Continue reading “21 Running, Working, Experiential Definitions of Mysticism” →

Sermon: Born to Be a Light

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment
homrich-9
Trial for the Homrich 9. Activists blocked trucks from turning off Detroiters’ water.

By Bill Wylie-Kellermann, Saint Peter’s Episcopal Detroit, Epiphany 2, January 15, 2017

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-11
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

Our readings for today echo those of last week. Again we have reference to John, to the baptism of Jesus, the dove alighting upon him, AND again beside it a Servant song from Isaiah.

There is a striking commonality of Second Isaiah and John: both have central figures whose identity is hard to pin down. In the gospel of John it is the “beloved disciple,” identified only by that name. Is this a cipher for John himself, for his beloved community? Is there an historical referent? Even another character in the story? Or is this a narrative figure with which we, as readers, may identify, a call to discipleship by another name? Continue reading “Sermon: Born to Be a Light” →

Sermon: Epiphany under Empire: Remembering Resistance

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

3-kingsBy Ched Myers

Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, behütet uns auch für dieses Jahr, vor Feuer und vor Wassergefahr. (“…protect us again this year from the dangers of fire and water.”)

— prayer uttered during the traditional German feast of the Three Kings

The origins of the Feast of the Epiphany are historically complicated and ecclesially disputed.  We might think of it as a kind of peace offering from the Western to the Eastern Church, given the latter’s (surely older) January 6th date for the Feast of the Nativity.  The Twelve Days of Christmas, in turn, represent a bridge between the two traditions, straddling exactly our celebration of the New Year.  Continue reading “Sermon: Epiphany under Empire: Remembering Resistance” →

EPIPHANY: Light to the Powers

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

seasonsExcerpt and reflection from Bill Wylie-Kellermann’s Seasons of Faith and Conscience: Explorations in Liturgical Direct Action

Among the liturgical ironies of Epiphany is that the date of this ancient feast should be rooted in a heresy and then subjected to the interests of Roman imperial manipulation.

There were many gnostic approaches to Jesus, all tending to assault the integrity of his person. He wasn’t human,he only ‘appeared’ to be. He floated through life, his feet barely touching ground. Or,as some had it, the divine spirit swooped down on him at a certain point, occupying his body and slipping away just before the agony of the crucifixion. In short, he never died. Nor was he ever born. Against such the creeds,indeed the scriptures themselves, avail. Continue reading “EPIPHANY: Light to the Powers” →