Midlife Meditation

"Believe me!" It's hard to know where to begin. I mean...ew. Just...ew. But seriously, let's start with the provenance of this piece of...art. Two days ago it went up on a Twitter feed attributed to Tiffany Trump, but most likely a fake. It was accompanied by this prayer: Dear Lord, I pray in the Mighty name of Jesus, that you would give Donald J Trump wisdom and that you would protect him and fill him with Your Spirit and help him to withstand the fiery darts of the enemy. Now, in and of itself, there's nothing remarkable about such a prayer. The language is consistent with evangelical prayers for politicians perceived to be friendly to conservative Christianity, up to and including a nod to the opposition that associates them with demonic forces. Associating it with this picture--which, I learned from a quick Google search, has been in circulation at least since January, long before the faux Tiffany Trump turned it into an Easter tweet; though I was u...

This never happened. Did I get your attention? Are you furious? Concerned about the state of my immortal soul? Listening for the crack of thunder as God smites me with a lightning bolt? Or are you feeling suddenly insecure, worried I may be about to cast doubt on some of the truths that keep you sane? Or are there things you've been seeing and hearing about all your life, but never explored, and you'd like some help figuring them out? If you answered yes to any of those questions: good. That's exactly where I want you to be. Because the story I'm about to tell you is one of the most significant in the history of Western civilization, and how you interpret it will absolutely determine how you live through the Trump Era. Let's start with the truth: roughly two millennia ago, a baby was born to a Jewish couple somewhere in the Middle East. They named him Yeshua, a fairly common name, and raised him in their home town of Nazareth. As an adult, he became a...

"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7) In less than a week, we will celebrate the birth of a homeless savior. To be fair, only Luke's gospel places the birth of Jesus in a borrowed barn, and that only because his parents were traveling in a town with inadequate hotel facilities at the time of the blessed event. It is the life of Jesus once he began his ministry that is rootless, roofless, without any fixed address, a traveling man relying upon the kindness of strangers for shelter. I once got in hot water for describing Jesus as "homeless" at a men's prayer breakfast. It was 22 years ago, and one of the men hearing me speak was deeply offended by the thought. It could just have been that one man; after all, many churches operate soup kitchens, food pantries, and shelters for the homeless, and pastors' emergency funds are freq...

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:   “A voice was heard in Ramah,      wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;      she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:16-18)   Chances are that, even if you're a regular church goer, you've not heard this part of the Christmas story lately.   You probably know of it. It's appeared in a number of biopics of the life of Jesus. You've probably heard the expression "slaughter of the innocents" or "massacre of the innocents." And still, I doubt if you've heard a sermon preached on it.   I may be wrong. I, in fact, preached several sermons on this text during my ye...

  Here's a practice I'm not going to miss at all: the flowering cross. They come out on Easter, and I have wondered for years if the idea came from a florist. The sentimentality behind it is understandable: Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection, and it just happens to fall in early spring, so let's buy a bunch of cut flowers and decorate the cross with them! It's a popular custom, and typically the cameras come out after the service so people can take pictures of themselves in their Easter best, posing with the beautiful flowering cross. And I hate it. I always have. From the very beginning, I believed the cross should symbolize one thing: the death of Jesus. It actually does this best when there's a bloody corpse hanging from it, as can be found in many a Catholic church. But that imagery is deemed ghoulish by many, and probably properly so. It also teeters toward idolatry, which is why the Puritans removed it from Anglican c...

I lean leftward. A lot. I am well to the left of this guy: Still to the left of this guy: Maybe even a bit to the left of this guy: Here's one guy who's probably to the left of me:   What all these guys have in common (and I do apologize for not putting any women in this gallery, but sometimes I just want to get the damn thing written) is that they have had their positions distorted by both opponents and allies for their own purposes, and that those positions were far more nuanced than anyone gave them credit for.   In both politics and religion, nuance is the enemy of partisanism. People want simple, binary answers to their questions, sound-bite responses to issues that can be easily memorized, memed, and quoted ad infinitum on Facebook, Twitter, Pintarest, and whatever social medium du jour they get their news from. In churches, mosques, synagogues, and wherever else religious leaders wax homiletical, complicated, nuanced sermons generate congr...