“Love thy neighbor as thyself doesn’t mean loving just people whose skin tone is the same as ours. It means loving our neighbor, no matter the color of their skin, as we love ourselves.”
“What’s important, though, is that Jesus is not running from this trouble, but instead is going ahead and doing what is asked of him. He’s doing the right thing, in spite of what grief is going to come down on his head, on account of it.”
“When you look around your church on Sunday morning, look for the Josephs. They’re the less obvious saints, but I think you know who they are. Say a prayer of thanks for them, and for their particular flavor of witness.”
“We’re not talking mere drizzle, here, as in worry yourself not, for the winds will shift and the sun will soon shine. His words capture the despondency of a long and slow depression – clinical or otherwise – real suffering.”
“At your baptism God claimed you as a child of God. Forever loved and forever claimed. So what do you say we take time now to remember that call and the name God has given to each of us.”
“What was it Jesus said? That the healthy don’t need a doctor (Mk 2:17). So the sick come in our doors, and we live with them. And heal them to the extent we can, and to the extent we can’t we tolerate and try to love them. We may be the best cure for the current hate/outrage/anger culture we live in. The world, God’s world, needs us.”
“One time a girl in Sodom was convicted of giving bread to a poor person. As punishment, she was covered in honey and placed in front of a wasp’s nest. She died of wasp stings.”
“What I’m doing is like sticking a toe in the water to check the temperature and then gently wading out, deeper and deeper, until I am comfortable and once again a participating and contributing part of a community that accepts me and whatever gifts and ministries I can bring them. It’s not rebirth—once was enough for that—but it’s like a reception or hopeful return home.”
“As it is, in the version we have, Abram receives the promise, he sacrifices as God commanded him to do to seal the covenant, and he falls asleep into “a deep and terrifying darkness,” then suddenly there is a smoking fire pot and torch going in between the pieces of the offerings.”
“So here we are, nearly 2000 years later, in an era when fiery temperaments are rampant, when the desire to contain and limit God’s love in small self serving ways is prevalent, when humankind longs to hang on to the notion that some deserve, are in fact entitled, to be held up higher, more privileged than others.”