Sweeping House in the Unexpected Hour

Lectionary Reflections for the First Sunday of Advent (A)

From the reflection....

Again there will be a sweeping out of the house, but this is not a general condemnation of the whole inhabited world. This time one will be swept away and the other, next to the first, not. When housecleaning happens again it will not be a general deluge, it will be a more precise calling to account.

And with the coming of the Son of Man? Here Jesus' illustrations are more troubling: Again there will be a sweeping out of the house, but this is not a general condemnation of the whole inhabited world. This time one will be swept away and the other, next to the first, not. When housecleaning happens again it will not be a general deluge, it will be a more precise calling to account.....

For the complete Post, click HERE

In the Still of the Night

A reasonably short reflection on the untidy delight that is the Anglican Communion


In the still of the night, when all the pronouncements, letters, blog entries, emails, articles, books, opinions, mutterings and other tools of the struggle have been put down, the delight that is the Anglican Communion remains.

In the hours before the Lambeth Commission issues the Windsor Report, before the Church of England Report on Woman in the Episcopate, before the next round of fierce and necessary struggle is undertaken, the Anglican Communion is simply as it is, and we all are part of it.

A great deal is written about just why some of us should be denied membership in it, why others of us are the “real” Anglicans, why progressive action is necessary, why we can’t go on being untidy when all our ecumenical partners want us to be a church with a unified stance on issues, why (in other words) things can not remain as they are.

Still, in the quiet hours, I wonder: who we are is quite something! We are “untidy,” as Archbishop Tutu once remarked. Untidy enough so that justice found its way in even when we were not looking; just enough so that reason, reasonableness, got its foot in the door. Untidy enough that the doors are not locked against the stranger and the fool, the difficult and the lost.

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Contending with Anglican Realignment (first published, The Wtiness , 1/28/04)

From the Article....

The comfort in believing the Anglican Communion to be a substantial reality in a relatively secure universe has been replaced by the discomfort of a more fractured world and a shadow of a substance....

We are in the church mess of our times because national churches, denominations and world church structures cannot stand solid in a world where the notion of a single overarching narrative is no longer considered either relevant or possible....

The western world was brought kicking and screaming into modernity, and parts of the church never got over it. . . And now, as modernity is undergoing a transformation into we know not what -- that is, as we enter the post-modern period -- the church is kicking and screaming again....

To read the full article, click HERE

Wine in the Glass, Blood in the Sky

Wine in the glass, blood in the sky,
the folded promise of God
present
overwhelms all vision:
The Second Coming is pale
companion to the first.
The First, close as earth,
demands attention now:

Now, when the matters are as simple
as the nursing child,
the need to pay taxes
to the occupying powers;

Now, when the poor in spirit and in fact
long for release
and hope that God will make
all creation new;

Now, when the child stretches
and the mother sees the cross;
Now, when the strange visitors
bring rich people's gifts,
when what is needed are
bread and wine,
justice and mercy;

Now, when all the babble about
the Second Coming
is madness for the tongue,
the only sanity is to speak of this day,
and of every
this day,
as time for truth and peace,
and for Immanuel.

It is time to take the First Coming
seriously,
or the Second not at all.

(first published in the Witness, December 2003)

In-Your-Face Preaching (Luke 17:5-10)

(This article appeared in The Christian Century, September 12-19, 2001, p. 19. Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. . This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.)


Jesus is reported to have said, "The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone tries to enter it by force" (Luke 16:16). This might also be read, "The law and the prophets reigned until John, but now we are confronted with the preaching of God’s reign, and people demand to be part of it."

Jesus just won’t let go. Over and over again in Luke’s long narrative of Jesus’ interactions on the road to Jerusalem, Jesus persists in his effort to make us squarely face the fact that it is the reign of God that he is proclaiming and confronting us with -- not the reign of human perfectibility or even life under the law. He pushes and pushes against every excuse, every modification and every "weasel way" out of that confrontation we can invent. ...

For the rest of the article, click HERE