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The Two Wings of a Bird Called Love

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Maybe you’ve heard about it. But empathy is a sin. That is according to some so-called conservative Christians. Empathy as a sin is a thing. A couple books have been written about it, one called the Sin of Empathy by a professor at a Christian college and seminary. The other is called Toxic Empathy by Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative columnist. Elon Musk recently quoted the ideas of another thinker, Gad Saad, who claims empathy is a weakness in Western civilization. Saad, now finishing a book titled Suicidal Empathy, describes himself as culturally Jewish, but otherwise an atheist. As for his academic background, his expertise and PhD is in marketing. Nonetheless, the two Christians I mentioned above agree with Saad, an atheist, that empathy is a sin. When you delve deeper into their words, however, you quickly find out their critique of empathy is mostly bluster and, well, marketing. Their critique is really of empathy taken too far which they of course exaggerate. Empathy, if taken...
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Wealth, Power, Freedom

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These three temptations we read about this time of year and have known about for so long, what are they all about? We know what they are in the narrative sense. It’s pretty clear what the deceiver is doing. He is trying to pull Jesus to the dark side, to his side. Turn stones into bread. Worship me and be given all that you see. Throw yourself down and you’ll be saved. Jesus sees through the play, the ploy, the plot! Bread alone doesn’t a good life make. Idols of any kind leads nowhere; only the way of God is worthy. Testing God means the test-maker failing every time. But is there something deeper going on here than meets the eye? Are these 3 temptations as simple as they seem? Of course not. The Bible has been a bestseller for centuries for a reason. There’s so much nuance, so much depth, so much going on beneath the surface, all of which makes great literature great and meaningful. Such depth is good for the spirit as well. So ...
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The Transfiguration: Jesus's Enlightenment Experience

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Have you ever been to a mountaintop? Have you ever had a mountaintop experience where you reached some important peak and in the process things become clearer and lighter and brighter? Jesus’s mountaintop experience has its own Sunday. It comes just before Lent every year. Of course, I’m talking about the Transfiguration which I just shared from in Luke 9. It’s quite a moment! We might call it Jesus’s enlightenment experience. As is often the case, for Jesus, this enlightenment begins with prayer and, I’d like to think, some kind of meditation. The transfiguration happens eight days after Jesus lets his disciples know how all of this will end – with him on a cross. He will deny himself, take up a cross, and lose his life to save. He says follow me in doing that in your own way. The disciples have 8 days to mull this over. Jesus takes Peter and the brothers of thunder, James and John to the top of a mountain. Mount Tabor, scholars believe. As Jesus was praying, something s...
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The Kingdom of God: The John the Baptist Practice

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Something can be two things at the same time. A sunset can be beautiful yet at the same time indicate that a beautiful day is ending. Joy and sadness sometimes move together, like two dancers doing a waltz. Well, the kingdom of God is two things at the same time. It is a reality not to be fully realized until Jesus’s return and it is a present reality inside each of us, able to be realized right here and now, albeit imperfectly.   But what does this mean for our daily lives? That is today’s question. What does the kingdom of God mean for my daily spiritual life? As Christians living this side of Christ’s return, one of our most important tasks is to prepare the way for that return and the Kingdom of God Christ will usher in. We are all John the Baptists, preparing the way for Christ’s return! That we are all John the Baptists preparing the way for the kingdom is key to our answer to how we live the kingdom of God ever day. The practice of baptism is key, but baptism i...
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The Kingdom of God: Heavenly Commonwealth

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In the summer of 2019, after watching all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe catalog - the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman, etc - Corey and I attended the long awaited Avengers movie called The Endgame. Seeing that movie with my son stands as one of my fondest memories of fatherhood. Corey calls it a core memory of his childhood. He got that idea of a core memory from another movie, Inside Out. We love movies! The Endgame was one of those movies where the whole crowd stands at the end and cheers. We stood too, laughed, even cried. It's a precious memory, a core memory, that we both cherish. For Christianity, it has its own version of the Endgame. The kingdom of God fully actualized on earth, that is the endgame. That’s what Jesus’ return, his second coming, will bring about. Jesus will return and usher in the kingdom of God, making it a present reality here, a reality that will last an eternity. Jesus’s return. What do I think about this? While many folks believe ...
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The Kingdom of God: What It Is Not

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For the next few Sundays, we’ll be looking at the central vision of Jesus, the Kingdom of God. Knowing and understanding what Jesus meant when he talked about the Kingdom is crucial in our day, with talk and signs of Christian Nationalism out there. To know and understand what Jesus meant when he talked about the kingdom, is good to rule out first what the kingdom is NOT. Seeing what something fully is, often begins by noting what that something is NOT. So, this morning we begin our look at the kingdom of God by asking what the kingdom is NOT? To answer, I’ll be relying heavily on scripture. Scripture is crucial to differentiate the original vision of Jesus from the vision of powerful men with their lust for more power. We want to make sure we’re getting the real Jesus with his real vision of the kingdom, and not some syncretic version of it. Syncretic, what is that? Syncretic means to make a new worldvliew by mishmashing different worldviews together. In our case, syncretic ...
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A Pastoral Letter to a Grieving Church

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Dear Beloved Ones, The life of a church, like human life, is unpredictable. Things happen that no one was expecting and the collective body of Christ is left to deal with them. What is that quote about best laid plans? I had planned to begin a series of meditations on the Kingdom of God. It is an important one right now. We have Christian nationalists calling for an American kingdom of God. But they get the kingdom all wrong. An American kingdom of God, or Russian kingdom or Chinese kingdom, can never be the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom defies any qualification of nation or singular people. A particular nation in front of God’s kingdom is an oxymoron, a contradiction that makes the kingdom of God kaput. Anyway, that’s all I’ll say about it this morning. Why? Well, because that question of why? is so predominant these days amid so much grief, grief that this small body is enduring.  Unexpected tragedies, deaths and terminal illnesses, a long winter filled with sadness and suf...
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