Sunday’s Coming

Metaphor is essential to grasping the divine/human character of God. Nowhere is metaphor used more compellingly than by the apostle Paul, especially in his use of the word "adoption" as a metaphor for God's loving grace.

Several years ago I received from a parishioner a "Jesus Is the Reason for the Season" cookie tin. Every time I reached for a piece of Doris's divinity, I had to read that cheery-angry motto of Christian moralism.

The annunciation is analogous in my mind to the story of God's invitation to Abram to leave Ur and head to Canaan. Both stories have a bare, binary feel to them. These are hinge moments in the unfolding of God and God's mission with and for the world. Abram, yes or no? Mary, yes or no?

In October, a newly formed Right to Life group sponsored a week-long conference, entitled "Abortion and Feminism," on the campus of Yale Divinity School. The pro-choice posters posted by the Students for Reproductive Justice made it clear that seminarians are not of one mind on the issue.

As the second Sunday in advent approaches, I find the prophets of the season compelling. To my ears, their message sounds pretty consistent: "Change the ways of this world."

Patience is not one of my virtues, as those closest to me know. I want answers now, clarity now, unresolved issues settled now, anxiety lifted now.

Rarely do I compare biblical passages with television, let alone reality TV. But in preparing this week's Century lectionary column, somehow I started thinking about the show Undercover Boss, in which a high-level executive joins his or her own company's working ranks incognito. I couldn't let it go.

When I preach, I am absorbed in faces. I'm captured by the sustained opportunity preaching creates to gaze into the faces of those I am seeking to serve as a pastor. In worship, it seems more obvious that others are seeing me. In fact, I am truly seeing them. I see and absorb all kinds of things about people during these moments of proclamation. The most profound observation is also the most obvious: they are a gift.

Every pastor needs to address the issue of freedom and accountability. It's part of the pastor's role in nurturing a church community: neither a laissez-faire atmosphere nor a judicial one helps people grow as disciples.

The passage from Micah raises some important theological questions related to God's revelation. Micah is clear that focusing solely on our well-being and declaring war on the poor will lead to a cessation of revelation and vision.

The words of Proverbs 29:18--"where there is no vision, the people perish" (KJV)--seem appropriate for reflections on Moses's vision of the promised land.

In my state of South Carolina, we have a long history of not wanting anybody to tell us what to do with our land, our possessions, or our money. This has created a sense of fierce independence, as history bears out.

Preachers and teachers are really missing those summer days when we got to preach on wonderful parables about mustard seeds and loaves of yeast bread. Now it's judgment-parable season, and many of us wish we were on vacation.

Texts about "striving" make me itch. They bring to mind our own cultural commitments to speak about lifting ourselves by our own bootstraps to reach high goals.

As pastors, we spend a great deal of time sharing in the ongoing lives and adventures of our congregants and community members. We are also called, literally, to come to love and suffer with them when disappointments, disasters or deaths occur.

Of the texts appointed for Sunday, the tenth anniversary of what we now simply call 9/11, the Old Testament reading seems most capable of responding to the range of emotions we may feel as we remember the atrocities of that day.

The early church fathers had a saying: "The best bishop is a bad bishop." In other words, we sometimes grow more through adversity than we do by encouragement and supportive spiritual direction.

God sent Moses on a mission to rescue his people from oppression. He was asked to risk his life in a costly but exciting adventure--a mission of compassion and justice on behalf of a million other people.

I'm intrigued by the public radio program This I Believe. How often are we asked direct questions about what we believe? And what would you or I say when asked by Jesus, "Who do you say that I am?"