Imaging myself climbing into the casket and being buried with it was the last thing I had ever conceived. But there it was, the casket, my lifeless father, and suddenly an intimate closeness with death. After all, my father had just experienced death, how hard could it be? How bad could it be? Is itContinue reading “Thinking Death, Suicide, Life”
Tag Archives: resurrection
Leaning Into Death: An Alternative Reading of Acts 2.42-47
Preaching from Acts 2 this Eastertide, it dawned on me this familiar passage was saying something much simpler, yet more profound, than providing fodder for theological arguments between Pentecostals and, well, every other Christian. The early portion of this chapter (tongues of fire, upper room, etc.), gets most of the attention in the chapter, and rightlyContinue reading “Leaning Into Death: An Alternative Reading of Acts 2.42-47”
Too Scared to Love: an Essay on Fear, Love & the Gaze
FEAR & GOSPEL “Perfect Love Casts out all Fear,” so the writer of the Epistle of 1 John tells us. In a world of so much fear, and so little love, one is left to wonder if there is indeed a perfect love that can handle the level of fear that seems to be inundatingContinue reading “Too Scared to Love: an Essay on Fear, Love & the Gaze”
Exchanging the Resurrection for the Soul
“I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all theContinue reading “Exchanging the Resurrection for the Soul”
Christ Goes to the Movies: The Conjuring and Resurrection
Our culture is a walking contradiction. Drives me crazy. We are on board with Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, or any “professional” atheist writing today…then these same people buying the books of these methodologically inept charlatans of logic, flock to theaters to see a movie about nothing more, or less, than our fascination with the paranormalContinue reading “Christ Goes to the Movies: The Conjuring and Resurrection”
Sermon Pentecost 2013: Fire From the Tomb
This is a sermon I preached this past Sunday in my local Church of the Nazarene setting. My tradition has a precarious and intimate relationship to this text, especially as it concerns ideas of the holy spirit, holiness and Christian experience. As I began to look more carefully exegetically at this passage, particularly within itsContinue reading “Sermon Pentecost 2013: Fire From the Tomb”
Easter Hope is Paranormal Hope that our Bodies Matter
ParanormalChrist’s genesis is the very ambiguous event that we call the Resurrection of Jesus. It is this singular event that has shaped the contours of faith, belief, hope and dared to challenge the norms of creation by declaring that the impossible has happened and it has happened definitively in Jesus. And this impossible event, thisContinue reading “Easter Hope is Paranormal Hope that our Bodies Matter”