(I wrote this in June 2010) The storms on Wednesday night were very intense out here. We lost power before 6 p.m. After the cell passed, we called ComEd for an estimate of its return. The hour came and went, and so we went to a hotel. A baby girl in our care needed a […]
(I preached this sermon on August 15, 2010–the Feast of St. Mary, the Mother of Our Lord–at Wicker Park Lutheran Church in Chicago) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. On Friday the great film critic and now equally great blogger Roger Ebert offered […]
(I wrote this in September, 2010) It had been eleven years since I’d last seen Tom. At the end of a premature and ill-advised visit to Deep Springs not three months after I had graduated, I sat out where the college’s access road meets the state highway that splits the valley. It was early, perhaps […]
(I wrote this in February, 2011, when I was serving as a part-time associate pastor in a small Chicago parish and it seemed that I was not going to receive a full-time call anywhere) “Be careful what you wish for” is advice that I long ago learned to heed in my preaching life. I don’t […]
(I wrote this in December, 2010) Four long years had passed since I last visited New York, and it seemed at times as though my once-frequent trips out there had become a thing of the past. But a friend of long duration, with whom I had walked and talked through the interminable ELCA ordination process, […]
(This column was published in The Daily on June 12, 2011 under the title “Tied Up in Knots.” Since The Daily is no longer extant, I am posting it here) Wedding season is a challenging one for pastors. On the one hand, we don’t mind the extra income weddings provide for our congregations and ourselves. […]
(I wrote this in July, 2008, shortly after my internship at Bethel-Imani Lutheran church ended) Early last year, after buying yet another friend a copy of Gilead to see him on his journey away from Chicago, I read the opening on the train. I made myself stop after this: I don’t know how many times people have […]
(I wrote this in July, 2007, as I started my year of internship at Bethel-Imani Lutheran Church) A few short days after finalizing our move to the western suburbs following seven years of calling Chicago home, I motored down the eastbound Ike on my first day as a true commuter. I wondered if I would […]
I preached this sermon three years ago this week, on Jesus feeding the multitude (Matthew 14)
I wrote about the Vatican directives for the bread and wine in the Eucharist for Religion Dispatches: The genius of the eucharist, in strictly human terms, is in its simplicity: bread and wine, the everyday foods of Mediterranean antiquity, enter the ritual process to become body and blood. The elements are plain and common, so […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 