Tag: justice

  • Mini-sermon: A Different Kind of Power

    I had the chance this last weekend to share a 7-8 minute mini-sermon for my church’s online worship service, so I thought I’d share it with y’all as well. If you prefer to watch a video, the service is on YouTube here. My part starts around 36:34, but check out the other two mini-sermons before…

  • Empowerment and authoritarianism and the armor of God, with shout-out to the Black Panthers

    Here is one way I might translate Ephesians 6:10-17 (emphasis added): (10) Henceforth, (y’all) be empowered in (the) Lord and in the strength of his ability. (11) (Y’all) put on the whole armor of God for the purpose of y’all being powerful to stand up to the schemes of the devil; (12) because the wrestling,…

  • We the People (American Lament)

    We the People (American Lament) Take a needle, poke a hole in the  American pipe dream, and watch it all  deflate.  We the people  never knew how to  care for ourselves, our neighbors, let alone the ones that we call strange. We grasp with cowardice  to table scraps  of life, liberty, happiness, like broken records …

  • God is Calling Her Children

    God is Calling Her Children God is calling  her children to the garden, to walk through wildflowers in the place where life grows slowly and unveils itself in its own time, to let soil slip through fingers in the place where we do not need to be trailblazers, conquerors and colonizers, chairpeople and board members, but,…

  • Y’all, be angry!

    As someone who has spent a fair amount of time reading the NIV translation of the Bible, I was surprised when I translated Ephesians 4:26 from the Greek to find that it does not really say “in your anger do not sin” (NIV). It actually says, “be angry and do not sin.” (This is all…

  • Utterly spiritless

    In Ephesians chapter 3, Paul writes about the mystery of Christ that has been made known to him (v. 3). He writes about how God has given him grace to speak about the boundless riches of Christ (v. 8). And he writes that, in Christ, we have boldness and confidence to approach God (v. 12). …

  • Blow Up the Shelter (Apocalypse)

    Thinking of the situation over the last few months with Menlo Church (see this article for what seems like a pretty reasonable summary), and also just the general tendency of a lot of church leaders to cover up things that might seem incriminating rather than actually search for truth and try to do the right…

  • These Lines

    I resonated with much of Austin Channing Brown’s recent post about “unity” to her e-mail newsletter “Roll Call.” Austin encourages her readers to be aware of ways we might be asked to participate in a kind of unity that works against justice rather than for it. You can check out the post here if you’re…

  • Predestination is not that interesting

    Over the last couple years of studying Greek―three quarters at Fuller and then studying on my own since then―my vocabulary has reached the point where I know every word that is used at least ten times in the New Testament.  So, when I translate, I tend to plug along until I come across a word…

  • Solvitur Ambulando

    My mom introduced me to this phrase recently, and I liked it (even though it’s not Greek), so I wrote a poem about it. Solvitur Ambulando Solvitur ambulando it is solved by walking so we walked  and walked  and walked  until we found a better way. We walked until the blood that paved our streets…