Resurrection of the Lord (Year C, RCL)

The resurrection is an old, old message. But I need to be reminded.

“If to get a good message you need to make Judaism look bad, then you don’t have a good message.”

A good joke can reveal the distance between what is and what should be.

In the Eastern church's art, Christ arises triumphantly and magnificently—but not alone.

The Magnificat rejoices in a God who acts within human history.

At grief’s mercy, Mary stays at the site of her loss.

Is Isaiah's vision of a peaceful public square a naïve hope?

Many people are bound. Some don’t even know it. The difference between being free and being bound is at the center of our Gospel text this week.

I keep a 36-inch utility shovel in my church office. I use it to dig the graves that hold the cremains of our congregation's saints.

Each year when I sit down to write my Easter sermon, I remember Doris Olson. Doris was a pillar of the church, and when I arrived as the new pastor, she came to my office and told me a story.

Luke grounds the resurrection narrative in tangible details: the rock-hewn tomb, the linen cloth, the heavy stone, the fragrant spices. The reader can imagine the place and time. Then things fall off the map.

I didn't start my day thinking about gang killings. But then a man showed up and asked about a funeral for his nephew—on Palm Sunday.

Karl Giberson offers a cultural history of the Bible's first human. It's an intriguing and unsettling story.

When she knew she was dying, my grandmother took me to see the cornerstone of a small brick church in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. I didn’t recognize the sign outside. It was a Baptist church, I think. It was pretty rundown, but still in better shape than the neighborhood. Overgrown vacant lots were everywhere; it was like visiting an abandoned church in the jungle.

The story goes that God got a body. I’ve often pondered the relationship between incarnation and pain.

My father died about three years ago. As May comes around, the azaleas spring to life, and I remember my father's passing. Just as sure as the tulips and dogwood blossom, my mind wanders back to my dad. Even when I begin to open up to these strange and wonderful stories of Easter, struggling with the notions of recognition and revelation, I think about the last few months of my father's life.