Category: Uncategorized
Tasting and Baking our Call to Discipleship
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Over the last several weeks, I seem to have developed a chronic chocolate chip cookie baking problem. I would say that Isaac and I are baking a batch almost every other day. And it’s not just the baking that has become chronic, but the eating too. I think it is because I am waiting for my sister to give birth. It could really happen any second. It feels like all I know how to do in the waiting is bake these cookies. Continue reading “Tasting and Baking our Call to Discipleship”
Wild Lectionary: Dove Descending
By Ted Lyddon Hatten
John 1:29-42
John the Baptist saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove.
Doves/pigeons (they are the same, like canine/dog) hold a central place in our most sacred stories. From Noah’s ark to burnt offerings, these birds are easy to see if you have eyes that see.
Pigeons are easy to see in most major cities and have a reputation for being unclean. But for the poor, the outcast, and women of the ancient world, doves were the only way to be made clean. Pigeons purchased for pocket change were beheaded and burned by the Temple priests. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Dove Descending”
Sermon: Epiphany under Empire: Remembering Resistance
By 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
Excerpt 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”
Wild Lectionary: Water is Life
Baptism of the Lord
January 8, 2017
Laurel Dykstra, priest in charge of Salal + Cedar, a watershed discipleship community in Coast Salish Territory near Vancouver BC, and Steve Blackmer, priest at Church of the Woods in Canterbury, NH discuss the readings for January 8.
Steve: There’s so much here but what stands out to me is water, living, real water.
Laurel: What do you mean by “real water”?
S: Real water as opposed to tame water that is contained in the font, sometimes even covered up with a lid, the water itself is tamed and the act of baptism is tamed. But this is actual flowing water. You can imagine Jesus—not a casual surfacing but a splashing, bursting forth! In the psalm the voice of the LORD over mighty waters, powerful and present there’s a sense of divine power. It makes oak trees writhe, that is not a tame God but something wild and untamable.
L: Let’s look at the readings verse by verse. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Water is Life”
Sermon: Thirst
A Sermon by Joyce Hollyday. Given at Circle of Mercy: February 28, 2016
My friend Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann died on New Year’s Eve of 2005 of brain cancer. In the aftermath, her daughter Lydia claimed me as one of her two honorary mothers. One of the ways I’ve taken that beautiful tribute seriously was to be present to help catch her son Isaac when he was born three years ago.
Last month Isaac’s brother, Cedar, came into the world. I wasn’t present for his birth, but I had the delight of meeting him when he was ten days old and staying with him, Isaac, and their mothers for a few days. My main task was entertaining Isaac. I read a lot of books, put together countless puzzles, and played endless rounds of the game “Goodnight Moon.” Continue reading “Sermon: Thirst”
Solidarity
From Dr. Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary:
I would rather be in a crack house than a White House that promotes neo-imperial policies abroad and neoliberal policies at home…because in a crack house, at least I’m in solidarity with folk who are sensitive to pain.
Wild Lectionary
curated by Laurel Dykstra
Martin Luther wrote, “God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.” Watershed discipleship communities, forest churches, and farm-to-table faith projects attend in different ways to this Word in creation. But many of us falsely imagine that scripture is focused on divine-human relations and unconcerned with “trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”
The Psalm assigned for January 1 both assumes and demands that all creatures—celestial bodies, spiritual beings, plants, animals, and forces of weather—praise their creator. And the diversity of humankind is just one small part of this glorious chorus of praise. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary”
