At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from […]
Mercy
The Beauty of Imperfection
The primary cause of mental illness, Karl Menninger said, is the inability of people to forgive themselves for being imperfect. Those words came from Frank Griswold, the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, preaching at Saint Luke’s this morning. He was speaking of St. Paul, who sought famously to perfect himself through a rigorous […]
Never Too Late to Love
“It is never too late to love.” That’s what a good friend told me this week. I was telling her of a kind of break-through: I had learned to love someone a little better, to forgive someone (and pardon myself as well). It felt good, but almost immediately I thought, “I wish I had come […]
Two Words and a Wedding
Tonight I will officiate at my second wedding in a week. I like weddings, but I always struggle with what to say. At baptisms, the parents in the front pews listen even though they’re often tussling with older siblings of the one in white. At funerals, people listen intently. Their stare—both skeptical and desperate—says: […]
You Don’t Have to Be Good
The things people tell a minister after church. . . . Yesterday a woman I did not know spoke to me after church—she was there for a baptism. I heard about the church of her childhood, where “salvation” was attained by refraining from smoking and drinking and dancing and cursing. It was a rigid theology […]
God’s Christmas Kiss
It is Christmas Eve, the night when God comes for us, comes in the only way we could receive God-with-us. If the infinite God is to reach us finite humans, there will have to be some translation, some accommodation. And all the work will have to be on God’s part. There is an affecting story, […]
“Obsessed” With Abortion, Homosexuality and Birth Control
The church is “obsessed” with abortion, homosexuality and birth control. That comment by Pope Francis a few days ago made global headlines. It’s no mistake that all three bugbears are physical, of the body, sexual. Little-mind religion seizes on the carnal sins and makes avoiding them a cardinal virtue. That’s because it is mostly preoccupied […]
Love Wins–Every Time
This week was a rattler. The bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon sent a ripple through our nerves, through our families and communities. I heard from people whose children were there, a block or two from the finish line, heard the explosions, ran for dear life. Walked miles and miles to get […]