Wild Lectionary: Advent’s Procreative Urgency

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IMG_1895
Deer tracks in the snow

The First Sunday of Advent, Year C
December 2, 2018

By The Rev. Marilyn Zehr

Luke 21: 25-36

So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.  Luke 21:31

The Kin-dom of God is near.  It visits in the night like the spirit presence of the white-tailed deer.  I go out early to search for fresh prints in the previous night’s early snows.  Like the kin-dom of God, the deer are on the move.  It’s rutting season.  Their tracks tell me that the does and last year’s fawns move in groups.  The lone tracks that cross these are the bucks seeking mates.  I am not yet skilled or scent sensitive enough to notice the signs the bucks leave on branches to attract the does but I know it is so.  When they mate the doe and buck “enact a ritual of motion, touch, sound and scent before coming together.”  (p. 14, All Creation Waits, by Gail Boss and illust. by David G. Klein, 2016)  All is now pregnant possibility unfolding just beyond my vision in the night.  All I see of their restless urgency are the tracks in the morning snow.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Advent’s Procreative Urgency” →

Jesus Was Non-Binary

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Theological Animation2 Comments

ChristA re-post from our comrades at Friendly Fire Collective (11/27/18):

“So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, himself.”

All people are made in god’s image. The vast variety of human souls are all a little reflection of rich, deep, complicated god.

In his piece “Is God Transgender?” Mark Sameth writes about the “highly elastic” language used to describe gender in the Hebrew bible. As an example, he describes how Adam is referred to as “them” and Eve is referred to as “he” in Genesis 3:12.

The first people, made in god’s image, switching between pronouns from sentence to sentence. Continue reading “Jesus Was Non-Binary” →

Truth Sunday

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ChristtheKing-1-1500x926Sermon B Proper 29
“Christ the King”
Preached at the Church of the Incarnation, Ann Arbor, MI,
November 25, 2018
By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Psalm 93
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

I do love the church’s liturgical year, setting the rhythms of our prayer, our community life – and, on occasion, our public witness and action. Even when it’s is appropriated by the culture – inverted, inflated, commodified, corrupted – it still stands primarily as a counter rhythm, a different drummer to which we move. Continue reading “Truth Sunday” →

Bathed in the Warmth of Stories

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

fireBy Joyce Hollyday, a facilitator of the upcoming “Heart and Hearth: A Writing Retreat for Women.”

During Advent many years ago, I preached in the morning chapel service at a Pennsylvania college. The chaplain’s five-year-old son, Kyle, had memorized the Gospel of Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, and he was eager to recite it at lunch. He was flawless until he got to the part about the angels announcing to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace!” Forgetting the last phrase, Kyle concentrated for a few moments. Then he confidently launched in again, enthusiastically attributing these words to the hovering heavenly host: “Glory to God in the highest…and I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!” Continue reading “Bathed in the Warmth of Stories” →

Rooted in Story and Struggle

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BindingFor our final Sunday installment celebrating 30 years of Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, radical disciples weigh in on both Ched and his book. 

From Jennifer Henry, the executive director of Kairos Canada, reflecting on the viral image from Ossie Michelin’s cell phone in 2013 (left), portraying resistance to fracking led primarily by indigenous women:

OssieWhat I have learned from the witness of Ched Myers is that we can bring kairos moments like these into conversation with biblical moments, in ways that deepen understanding of the present day struggle and inspire prophetic action. His life’s work does not just demonstrate that we can build this bridge, but that we must, for the integrity of our faith and its call to justice. It is an intersection that enriches both our grasp of the historic texts and our commitment to current struggle. In Ched’s hands this process is never theoretical, but embodied, wading deep into the bible, but just as deeply into social change movements so that we’re grounded in, both rooted in story and struggle.

Continue reading “Rooted in Story and Struggle” →

Salal + Cedar + Watershed Discipleship

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Salal and CedarRe-posted from the website of KAIROS Canada, uniting Canadian churches and religious organizations in a faithful ecumenical response to the call to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

While the just transition to a clean energy economy requires new technology and new ways of understanding our planet, it also calls on us to embrace new ways of knowing one another; to living in right relations with each other and with the earth. Salal + Cedar is a ministry located in Coast Salish territory which is supporting Christians on this path. Salal + Cedar is part of a growing movement across North America called Watershed Discipleship. This movement seeks to reconnect people to the creation-values at the core of Christian tradition and explores ways for communities to reconnect with the land and water, and all living things of a particular place. For Salal + Cedar this means seeking transformative encounters with the species and geography of the Salish Sea basin and Fraser River watershed. A watershed is an area of land where precipitation and surface water flow to a single body of water. Because we are all part of a watershed, no matter where we live, we can all have these encounters in our own watersheds. Continue reading “Salal + Cedar + Watershed Discipleship” →

Brave Space

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment
Screen Shot 2018-11-13 at 4.31.09 PM
PC: Michael Raymond Smith

By Micky ScottBey Jones, re-posted from her website here   

Together we will create brave space

Because there is no such thing as a “safe space”

We exist in the real world

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere, Continue reading “Brave Space” →

Wild Lectionary: Apocalypse

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

fireReign of Christ
Proper 29 (34) B

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Revelation 1:4b-8

By: Ron Berezan

I used to avoid apocalyptic scriptures like the plague.  I’m beginning to rethink that.

For many years, I found the violent imagery, intense dualism and gnostic sounding anti-earth passages too hard to stomach. So I chose to ignore them – mostly. I’ll admit, there was always a tinge of guilty fascination, a bit like staring at an accident scene, even though I knew I really shouldn’t.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Apocalypse” →

We Need a Moral Breakthrough

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BarberAn excerpt from Rev. William Barber’s address presented before the 74th Union for Reform Judaism Biennial convention on December 6, 2017.

We are here tonight, and 62 years ago would have been the fifth day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Today, when the prophetic actions of Rosa Parks like Shiphra and Puah in the Bible, chose to challenge the Pharaoh of Jim Crow. She sat down and birthed a movement on a stage that produced a prophet like Moses named Martin. She sparked a nonviolent revolution. Continue reading “We Need a Moral Breakthrough” →