Author Archives: bjdueholm
Ash Wednesday: Create in Me
(Note: I preached this sermon at Wicker Park Lutheran Church on Ash Wednesday, 2011) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. “Human love starts with the object,” Martin Luther wrote in an academic dispute in the year 1518. “The love of God does not […]
Transfiguration: Vision
I’m guilty of this. Totally guilty of it. I am so captivated by the reality that is before my eyes that I don’t give a whole lot of thought, most of the time, to what my eyes may be leaving out. People in some cultures have taken dreams and visions very seriously. And I think dreams and visions are good but the real action is what I can see. Or, at least, what we can see together.
Transfiguration: Saving Face
How terribly great and mighty God’s glory is, greater and mightier than we can imagine! How frail and small humanity is! How absurdly brief our life! God cannot help but love God’s creation. And we cannot help but love God, in some form or fashion. But we may never meet face to face in this life.
Unless…
The Blessed Failure
(Note: I wrote this in October, 2012. I’m republishing it for St. Ansgar’s feast day tomorrow) As [Jesus] was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me […]
Youth in Exile
(Note: I wrote this in May 2010, when the Rolling Stones re-released Exile on Main Street) When I picked up Exile on Main Street in 1992, during the summer after seventh grade, the album was something of a hidden classic. It was not much anthologized on the numerous hits discs and live albums the Stones pumped out […]
I Like Politicians
The loss of this mode of politicking is the less-seen shadow side of the dysfunction and looming institutional crisis created by extreme gerrymandering. Once you know with a mathematical certainly who you don’t need, and where you don’t ever have to go, you are just wasting your time trying to hear out and nod along with some random collection of constituents. You have to tend to your party’s nominating voters and your funders, and they don’t care whether you’re able to empathize with whatever marginal voter you’re chasing at the mosque or the deli or the tavern.
With Authority
But here’s the thing: Jesus, like Moses, did not come before the people as a religious professional. He did not come in special clothing or wielding a special credential. In Mark’s Gospel, which we hear today, there is not even any annunciation to Mary, dream for Joseph, or Bethlehem or wise men. There is only Jesus. His words and actions are not a confidence game. They don’t borrow their authority from anyone or anything. They have their own authority.
Solidarity
(Note: I preached this sermon at Messiah Lutheran Church on the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 8, 2015) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. In the morning, when it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, […]
Chicago Diarist: On Burying the Dead
(Note: I wrote this in July 2010) On the first day of my first quarter of Divinity School, I was dispatched to preside at a burial. My pastor couldn’t get down to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery that day, so I made the trip–in a borrowed clergy shirt, borrowed black pants, borrowed car, carrying a borrowed liturgical manual […]
Time Present
(Note: I wrote this in July 2010. While none of it is left there, it helped prompt me to write a book) Last week I went to a local establishment to watch some baseball and read Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being. In retrospect it was a comical choice. On the screen I watch the momentary […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 