Spirit

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butterflyReflecting on Galatians 5

“It doesn’t saying anything about what you should do, but the spirit in which you do it. It has everything to do with the spirit in which you do the work. It forces us to ask the question, what is our freedom for?”    – Liz McAlister

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Continue reading “Spirit” →

The Woman with an Issue of Blood

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

clayBy Denise Griebler. Part of a continuing series on badass women in the bible.

“If I could but touch the hem of his garment.
If I could but touch a part of his robe
I know I’d be healed, my sins all forgiven.
If I could but touch him I know I’d be whole.”
– the chorus of a gospel song by Rev. George A Rice

Matthew 9:18-25; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:41-56

The story goes that while Jesus was walking through a crowd, she touched him and was restored to herself.  Imagine that gutsy move.

She’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years.  Her search for a cure had bled her of everything she had and after all that, her condition was worse not better.  Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza says through this woman we glimpse of  the impoverishment of the permanently ill.  And she didn’t just suffer an incurable illness, but she was also permanently unclean and impure.  Whomever she touched would also be made unclean.  Imagine 12 years of untouched isolation. Continue reading “The Woman with an Issue of Blood” →

All In

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Jesus JerusalemBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

This week’s Gospel offers some of the most challenging, urgently needed by us today messages found in Luke’s Gospel. It is a companion with next week’s Gospel, which directly follows this week’s passage. We will address them as a two-part unit in this and our next commentary. Continue reading “All In” →

I Don’t Speak Dari Yet

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Just PeacemakingLeave a comment

sarah thompsonA report from Christian Peacemaker Teams executive director Sarah Thompson:

Our Christian Peacemaker Team is accompanying refugees in Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece. As Executive Director I have a chance to do a two week team visit. I sat across the table from a man from Afghanistan yesterday. Neither he nor I are from Greece or speak Greek. I don’t speak Dari yet, and he just began the English classes offered to refugees. We don’t know each other’s names and yet we are deeply and violently connected. My village paid for his village to be bombed (through the US led war in Afghanistan).

Continue reading “I Don’t Speak Dari Yet” →

We say their names again and again…so their lives will not be forgotten

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Just Peacemaking, UncategorizedLeave a comment
orlando_shooting_lgbt_vigil_ap_img
photo from The Nation

Akyra Monet Murray, 18
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21
Amanda Alvear and Mercedez Marisol Flores, 25 and 26
Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28
Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25
Antonio Davon Brown, 29
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49
Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24
Cory James Connell, 21
Darryl “DJ” Roman Burt II, 29
Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 Continue reading “We say their names again and again…so their lives will not be forgotten” →

Just Mercy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, RaceLeave a comment

Bryan StevensonFrom lawyer Bryan Stevenson on DemocracyNow.org:

I think that we have too little compassion in our criminal justice system. We’ve been corrupted by the politics of fear and anger. We’re doing harsh, extraordinarily torturous things to people. And I think we’ve forgotten that, you know, it’s not mercy, it’s not justice, it’s not compassion, when we give it to people who haven’t done anything wrong. You earn the right to call yourself compassionate and merciful when you expose people who have fallen down, who have done bad things to your justice, to your mercy. And I see a criminal justice system completely devoid of mercy, which makes us completely devoid of justice. And we’ve got to do better.

*See also Stevenson’s latest project: a museum on slavery.

What is Prayer?

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ed loringBy Eduard Loring, from the April 2016 issue of Hospitality, the newsletter of Atlanta’s Open Door Community

“I will never pray again. I have prayed and prayed and nothing ever happens. I am finished.” So said the 90-year-old grandmother last week when her grandson Mark overdosed on heroin. Mark’s father died 6 years ago from esophageal cancer. Face, mouth, throat deranged. Spoken word distorted. Unintelligible if more than one syllable. Tobacco kills. God forgives a repentant addict; God does not stop the side effects of the sin, though the power of Love’s prayer, and medicine, exercise and nutrition can mitigate the fury of the Evil One and her daughters Tobacco and Heroin. Often heal. Continue reading “What is Prayer?” →

The Maddening Thing

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tabbiAn excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s recent Rolling Stone piece “Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie:”

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide. Continue reading “The Maddening Thing” →

Confronting Legion

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation5 Comments

DemoniacBy Ched Myers, Fifth Sunday of Pentecost, Luke 8:26-39

Note: This is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2016.

This Sunday’s text is Luke’s version of the infamous Markan “political cartoon” of the Gerasene Demoniac (Mk 5:1-20). Here Luke follows Mark relatively closely (whereas Matthew changes and shortens it significantly, Mt 28-34), including placing it on the heels of Jesus’ crossing and storm-stilling on the Sea of Galilee (which Luke insists on calling a “lake”). Continue reading “Confronting Legion” →