To Do Is To Know

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

the-good-samaritan-1907By 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” →

Wild Church: Plumb Lines and Prophets

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Proper 10(15) C

Amos 7:7-17

By Matthew Humphrey

“See I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people.”

So Amos prophecies in today’s lectionary reading. This shepherd-turned prophet emerges from South of the Border to unleash a fiery word upon Israel and King Jeroboam. Like Hosea before him, he professes, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was a shepherd, and a dresser of sycamore-trees.” This location that makes him the choice instrument of God’s word to Israel. Continue reading “Wild Church: Plumb Lines and Prophets” →

An Uneasy Peace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

NicholaBy Nichola Torbett (in center of photo, blockading Wells Fargo in San Francisco in solidarity with Line 3 Pipeline fighters/water protectors). Sermon re-posted with permission from The Longing is the Compass blog

I choked my own self up preaching this sermon (Sunday, May 26) at the very hospitable and loving Park Presidio United Methodist Church. The scripture is John 14: 23-31.

Happy Eastertide! Although, if you’re anything like me, Easter feels like a long time ago, we are still in the liturgical season of Easter, which I think maybe we take a little too blithely, honestly. I mean, resurrection is just plain weird. Let’s admit it. The guy was dead, and then he wasn’t.

Isn’t. Continue reading “An Uneasy Peace” →

Confessions of a Westward Expansionist

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PrintBy Tommy Airey

This book review of Rose Marie Berger’s Bending the Arch originally appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Geez Magazine.

The day after the brutal massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, there was a blizzard. The snow highlighted the innocence and purity of the victims. However, the whitest of snow could not cover the extent of Indigenous blood.

I recently heard this story told by Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs, and a few days later I found myself stranded under two feet of snow in Northern Paiute land, sitting next to the fire with Rose Marie Berger’s newly released book of poems, Bending the Arch. Continue reading “Confessions of a Westward Expansionist” →

My Prayer (August, 1980)

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Biography as Theology, Uncategorized2 Comments

OzBy Oz Cole-Arnal, former professor emeritus at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

In his work on his manuscript-size memoirs, charting a life between the two Poor Peoples Campaigns, Oz Cole-Arnal (photo right) has reached the decade of his early to latter ’40s, the most broken period of his 78 years. He recounts betraying virtually all his values, barely able to sustain his faith & vision toward radical equality, stumbling along in brokenness, hurting all those he loved most.  One help in such tumbling was the turning to poetry, which he has rediscovered & re-absorbed. This is the first of two poems to be posted on RadicalDiscipleship.net. 

Agonizing over bills, wanting more money, always more.
  Always hungry, often empty, craving the offered promises.
              Success, manhood, recognition, love,
              Happiness in pills, food, the quick win, casual sex.
              I deplore it, yet want it all.
                             Forgive my bourgeois ways!

Continue reading “My Prayer (August, 1980)” →

The Guardians of Whiteness

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RubyFrom the Front Porch of Ruby Sales.

*Originally posted to social media on July 1, 2019.

This morning as I hear the press legitimizing Trump’s lies as truth, it occurs to me that it is time for the prayer warriors to offer an intervention. May we pray for the soul healing of White Americans so that they love themselves enough to end the reign of White sociopaths who for centuries have carried out a cocktail of interlocking socio-spiritual abuse to contain White resistance. May we pray that they learn to love their authentic selves and remove years of self-loathing that spills over in anger and transference towards Black and Brown peoples. May we pray that they replace non-redemptive anger with redemptive anger that gives them the will and reason to confront the real abusers. Continue reading “The Guardians of Whiteness” →

Collapse

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CollapseBy Ric Hudgens

A review of The Collapse of Complex Societies , Joseph A Tainter (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

So I’ve been abed for several weeks, and therefore able to reflect upon the bigger picture. I’ve just finished a book that has long been on my reading list. It’s a fascinating, thought provoking work by anthropologist-historian Joseph Tainter, who ponders the meaning of collapse in reference to complex societies. The qualifier is important. Continue reading “Collapse” →

Hospitality and the People of God

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Emma LazarusBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, for this weekend’s lectionary Gospel story (Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)

*Originally posted on RadicalDiscipleship.Net on June 30, 2016.

For Jesus followers in the US, this week’s Gospel offers a powerful counter-narrative to the flag-waving patriotism of the 4th of July. Nearly every detail challenges those of us who live and thrive at the heart of empire to reconsider which “sacred story” binds us together as a people. Continue reading “Hospitality and the People of God” →

The Gift of Vulnerability

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Joyce Hollyday

The jangle of an incoming text woke me from a deep sleep. “We’re in trouble,” it began. It was 5:16 a.m. California time. I was 2,000 miles from home, jet-lagged and groggy. I managed to send a reply to Michael along the lines of “Be there as soon as I can.”Michael and me with Sparky at the beach

Michael Galovic and Tamara Puffer met almost 25 years ago at the Open Door Community in Atlanta, when he was living there as a resident volunteer and she showed up one day to help out in the soup kitchen with the youth group from the suburban Presbyterian church where she served as associate pastor. Tamara kept coming back. Her time at the Open Door reshaped her theology and calling, and she began seeking a position where she could serve marginalized people like the homeless ones and former prisoners who were revealing Jesus to her there in transformative ways. Continue reading “The Gift of Vulnerability” →