Latest Articles
Where our deep sadness and the world’s deep hunger meet
Sometimes vocation springs not from joy but from trauma and grief.
A prophetic model (Amos 7:1-17)
Christians struggle to be prophetic in the world. Amos could help.
Underlined words
As it tells the story of our time, the Century makes readers and writers of us all.
What I left out of my mother’s funeral sermon
I told the truth about her but not the whole truth.
We need to talk about climate change
Scientist Katharine Hayhoe recommends focusing on common ground and hope.
Black men I’ve mourned
I’ve preached more than 800 funeral sermons. Many of these deaths have marked me.
Maggie Nelson finds freedom in the emphatic middle
Her new essay collection examines how Americans thread the needle between care and constraint.
Preaching in the valley of actual death
My task at funerals is to share the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
July 31, Ordinary 18C (Luke 12:13-21)
The lilies of the field don’t have student loans.
Fantasy and reality after Roe
One can imagine an anti-abortion politics that started with economic solidarity or righteous fury at male sexual license. But the thought experiment only demonstrates its own absurdity.
When I think of Downton Abbey, I think of the costumes
Beautiful objects in a sea of inequity and decadence