Liz Cooledge Jenkins

Tag: justice

  • Election Week Blessing

    Because I wanted to be cool like Nadia Bolz-Weber (just kidding―I’ll never be as cool as Nadia!) and write some blessings of my own. (Check out Nadia’s beautiful “Blessed are the Agnostics” piece here, if you like. It’s really lovely.) These words are loosely inspired by the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and much less loosely inspired…

  • What Does Such a Moment Ask?

    What Does Such a Moment Ask? What does such a moment  ask of us? Kindness―maybe― but not the kind that cowers  in a corner and will not articulate  the jarring, rage-inducing,  healing, liberating truth. Love―maybe― but not the kind that circles  wagons, covers up injustice and provides protection for abusers to continue their abuse. Humanity―maybe―…

  • 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…