The Insurrection of January 6 brought shock to our country like we have not seen since 9/11 when planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many of us watched in horror as armed militias stormed our American Capitol building shouting death threats at Vice-president Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I’m convinced that with another few minutes, they…
Read MoreThese last three weeks have felt like a California tule fog. We are forced to drive blind without any sense of where we are, where we are going, and what the path ahead looks like. We are disoriented and unable to get our bearings. All around us we find sickness, death, job loss, and we wonder if we’re next. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this.
Read More“Left Behind.” That term was used in the Tim LaHaye/Jerry Jenkins books described as The Left Behind Series published in the first decade of the 21st century. The phrase refers to those who remain on earth to face God’s judgment after the “rapture” of the church which many evangelical Christians find in Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica (4:13-18).
Read MoreThirty years ago, Hurricane Hugo unexpectedly roared into Charlotte, and with it a number of things we assumed were true were turned on their ears.
Read MoreTwo times in my adult life, I have experienced dramatic change in how I understood and practiced Christian faith. The first occurred in my early twenties with a transition away from a more emotionally based faith…
Read MoreThis past Sunday, the congregation where I worship, Calvary Church in Charlotte, NC, started their week-long annual missions conference. For me, this is the highlight of the year in terms of Sunday-morning worship.
Read MoreWe’re just through the Christmas season (and our fellow Anglican and Orthodox Christians celebrate a bit longer than the rest of us do). Winter break is over for schools. Most of us are trying to get back to normal and deal with holiday debt. Congregations begin to look ahead to Easter, which comes a bit later on the calendar this year.
Read MoreLast summer, the murder of eleven Jewish people while at worship in a Pittsburgh synagogue stunned so many of us, not just because it represented an assault on religious freedom in the United States, but because it served as an ugly reminder that Antisemitism still lurks in the shadows of American life. In the last ten years, we have seen horrible Antisemitism manifested in Europe and the Middle East, but beginning with Charlottesville and the alt-right “tiki-torch” march through the campus of the University of Virginia in the summer of 2017 we were shocked to see it expressed in such hateful ways in our own country.
Read MoreAs I was getting ready for commencement, I watched another ceremony that captured much of the world’s attention—the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Nobody does ceremonies like the British Royals. And this one mixed hundreds of years of tradition with icons of popular culture. As the ceremony progressed, cameras panned across a crowd that featured a who’s who of world famous celebrities.
But what grabbed my attention was the sermon.
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