Wild Lectionary: Teach Me Wisdom in My Secret Heart

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products with palm oilProper 19(24)

Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 51
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie

The words, “Your people… have acted perversely” could literally be stated today as “Your people are acting perversely.” Those words from Exodus are as applicable today as they were at the time that book of the Bible was written. Modern society has made idols of acquisition and consumption fed by greed for money and/or lust for power and prestige. Like Paul, in the first letter to Timothy, many of us “have acted ignorantly” in our complicity and support of these perverse systems that harm people and our relatives in creation. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Teach Me Wisdom in My Secret Heart” →

Five Years In: Let’s Keep Composting Empire Together!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire2 Comments

LydiaA Message from our Curators:

It’s really hard to believe that RadicalDiscipleship.net has been curating posts every day for five years. These voices have provided inspiration and challenge for those of us subverting popular and powerful versions of colonial Christianity. As we move into Year Six of this journalistic vocation, we’ve made an undemocratic executive decision to scale down our content. We believe this is good news as we’ve heard consistently from folks that it is quite a challenge to “keep up” with our daily onslaught of deep posts. Continue reading “Five Years In: Let’s Keep Composting Empire Together!” →

Why Faith Must Learn the Language of Flood: Water as Apocalyptic Witness of Last Resort

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J Perk, ShoesBy Jim Perkinson (09.01.2019)

*Note: This is a sermon Dr. James Perkinson (right, performing spoken word at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit, MI) did  for the liturgical “season” being adopted by some churches including St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit. It is called the Season of Creation (Sept 1 to Oct 4). The focus on this Sunday (September 1, 2019) was on the oceans. J-Perk included a number of biblical passages related to the seas and water and asked a few questions/made some comments [as indicated], before getting into the sermon proper. 

Background

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and Earth. The Earth was without Form and Void, and Darkness was upon the Face of the Deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the Waters—Canaanite Mythology (Gen 1:1-2).  Continue reading “Why Faith Must Learn the Language of Flood: Water as Apocalyptic Witness of Last Resort” →

Thin Love

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

RicBy Ric Hudgens (right)

“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”–Toni Morrison

I don’t want the thin love anymore.

So thin it needs a second coat.

Too thin
to be seen at a certain angle
to hold the weight
to pull us out of the ditch
to keep things connected
to grasp with both hands
to tie my life together
to nourish our souls.

Give me the thick love.

The love that is love.

–rdh
08/12/2019

Don’t Touch

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Dan B.An excerpt from Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (ed. John Dear, p.50).

One day, as we were being taken handcuffed from the jail for a court appearance, a young nun who was a dear friend reached out her hand to mine in solidarity as we issued from the jail. One of the marshalls came forward in a swift, reptilian move. He crashed down between our hands with a karate blow. “Don’t touch!” It was the epitome of the system; he had said it all.

Don’t touch–make war. Don’t touch–be abstract, about God and death and life and love. Don’t touch–make war at a distance. Don’t touch your enemies, except to destroy them. Don’t touch, because in the touch of hand to hand is Michelangelo’s electric moment of creation. Don’t touch, because law and order have so decreed, limiting the touch of one person to another, to the touch of nightsticks upon flesh. Continue reading “Don’t Touch” →

The Way Costs Exactly Everything

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

BabelBy Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson (on Luke 14:25-33)

*Note: this piece was originally posted to Radical Discipleship during the summer of 2016.

It is no mystery who Luke’s audience is in this week’s Gospel (14.25-33): “For which of you, intending to build a tower (Gk, purgon)…” (14.28). Clearly, this is not a building plan envisioned by landless peasants, lepers and other poor and marginalized people. Luke is speaking here to the young elite of the Roman Empire, seeking to instill in them the cost of rejecting their imperial formation and choosing Jesus’ Way of discipleship. Continue reading “The Way Costs Exactly Everything” →

Wild Lectionary: Choosing Life in the Context of Climate Change

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

69907266_10156534406631146_7098887487753289728_nProper 16(21)C

By Zoë Tobin Peterson

I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.  Deuteronomy 30:19

Growing up in Vancouver, a “green city,” I have been at the forefront of a shift towards choosing life. A shift towards environmental consciousness; but consciousness isn’t always enough. We can say we choose life all we want but until there is action behind it nothing is going to change. Our reasons for action matter as well, as they determine the proportions of the actions we take. If our intentions are to save the world for our generation alone, long-term changes just aren’t going to be made. Are we choosing life out of spite? Necessity? Validation? Love? Or are we acting because we see the Earth as more than just a witness?

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Choosing Life in the Context of Climate Change” →

The Perpetual War Stops Here

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imagesPlowshares’ Motions Denied, Trial Set for October 21

Thank you for supporting the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.  On August 27, 509 days after their arrest, a federal judge denied all the pre-trial motions by the our friends. Today, the judge set their trial date: Monday, October 21, 2019 with jury selection beginning at 9 a.m.
The Plowshares had urged U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to dismiss their charges for numerous legal reasons as well as the fact that the hundreds of first strike nuclear weapons on the submarines based at Kings Bay Naval Base are illegal and immoral.

Continue reading “The Perpetual War Stops Here” →

Vine and Fig Tree seeking new members

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Vine and Fig Tree is an intentional Christian community in the  Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia (http://vineandfigtree.wixsite.com/vineandfigtree).  We currently have five households, but one of our units will be opening in the coming months.  We are looking for persons who would be interested in exploring community with us.  Our core commitments are:  support of each other in our lives and vocations; common prayer; living simply and caring for creation; resisting the dominant culture, including our own addictions to militarism, racism, and other “isms”; providing hospitality for persons in need or transition; and fostering a spirit of celebration and creativity.   Our community life includes a weekly meal together, regular optional prayer, bi-weekly house meetings, shared chores and gardening, monthly work days.  The available unit has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, and would be ideal for two persons or a couple with a small child.

 

If you are interested, contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com.

White Ain’t God

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

nick petersonAs RadicalDiscipleship.net approaches Her 5-year birthday this month, we will start posting more frequently from the archives. This classic is from the prophetic imagination of Nick Peterson, currently pursuing his PhD in Liturgics and Ethics at Emory University. 

*Originally re-posted from social media in April 2016.

As a powerful but vain imagination, white supremacy attempts to imprison God to whiteness. In a white supremacist framework – God has a white sentence without parole. While confined, God must look white, talk white, think white, affirm white, bless white, and value, above all things, “his” own image made in whiteness. White supremacy attempts to hold the very God of the universe in chains – theological, liturgical, spiritual, creedal, geographical, social, emotional, and political.  Continue reading “White Ain’t God” →