blip : Beyond Lost Intellectual Ponderings :

I’ve had a number of people email me and ask for the unedited version of my review of Ted Grimsrud and Mark Thiessen Nation: Reasoning Together. In an earlier post I had asked people to email me if they wanted me to read the full book review instead of the shortened one that appeared in [...]

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Sermon preparation…

First I read a bunch of the more interesting commentaries on the assigned lectionary passage. And usually nothing happens. No sermon ideas—although every once in a while a word or a phrase or a sentence triggers a sermon. After spending a day with the commentaries, I put their careful exegesis aside and take a [...]

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I wrote a short review of Hauerwas and Coles’ book from last year, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary (Cascade). It appears in the current issue of the Mennonite Weekly Review (May 4, 2009). Here’s an excerpt:
Politics involves all the ways we tend to the common good. This happens in our neighborhoods, not just in [...]

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As I was trying to think through a sermon for Ash Wednesday, I returned to Genesis 3 where God tells Adam and Eve that they came from dust and shall return to dust: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” God links this declaration of human mortality with labor pains: “By the sweat [...]

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As is usually the case, the driving ideas for my last sermon didn’t come from my own head. That almost never happens. I got my stuff from Karl Barth’s wonderful little book on prayer: Prayer. Here are a few of the quotes that proved helpful for my sermon:
Prayer is a grace, an offer of God. [...]

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Barth has a wonderful and short book on the Apostle’s Creed: Dogmatics in Outline (1947). Chapter 14 offers some good reading for Advent. The chapter is entitled, “The Mystery and the Miracle of Christmas.” The passage below is an excerpt from the end of the chapter. Granted, Barth is a sexist. That’s nothing new. Yet, [...]

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Herbert McCabe is a theologian that I come back on a monthly (sometimes weekly) basis. In my attempt to learn more about his context, I’ve started reading the writers who formed the radical Catholic journal called “Slant.” Their ranks include names like Terry Eagleton, Brian Wicker, Adrian Cunningham, Martin Redfern, Laurence Bright and Neil Middleton—a [...]

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I’ve worked my way through Stanley Hauerwas and Rom Coles new book, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (Cascade, 2008). Not only does Rom Coles offer Christians a different vision of politics and democracy with so many possibilities, I also think he brings out the best in [...]

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At times, preparing a sermon comes easy. But most of the time the sermon comes only through much wrestling with the word. Leading up to a Sunday when I’m assigned to preach, it’s not unusual for my prayers to consist of complete frustration with the lectionary Scriptures. And that’s exactly what this week is like. [...]

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In preparation for a talk I gave on Liberation Theology, I decided to re-read the 1984 Vatican document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: “Instruction on certain aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation.’” If those who don’t know about this document, it’s a very important reflection of the Roman Catholic Church [...]

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