All the Assembly Kept Silence

Download a PDF of this sermon Amos 7:7-15 • Acts 15:6-12 In 2008, a fragment of a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ got clipped into the news cycle for some days. To the shock and awe of millions, that preacher, who was pastor...

For Disturbing the Peace

Jesus’ hour has come. All the gospels use this word—the hour—for Jesus’ passion. They mean not sixty minutes, of course, but the time of decision. None of the other words we use to measure time denotes the seriousness of decision—not “just a second” or “in a minute”; not “this week” or “this month” or “next year.” Not even this life, this age, this era bring us to decision. But, the day dawned, and his hour has come.

Breaking Ground

Tto quote rather famously, “Oh Jonah, he lived in a whale [2x] / For he made his home in / That fish’s abdomen . . . but it ain’t necessarily so. Indeed, the story of Jonah is not about that fish. And the book is so easy to read—just four chapters—that we ought to wonder: Has church focused on the unbelievable word in this book in order to not hear the undesirable word from the book?

Cry, the Beloved

Don’t you sometimes feel that religion, the way we do it, is no match for the way the world does wrong? Every day in this city, police stop and frisk–violate–two thousand mostly black and brown men doing nothing wrong–and what has church to say to that sorrow? A few weeks ago, an eighteen year old Bronx boy was shot and killed by a policeman in the bathroom of his own home. He was unarmed, scared, dumping something in the toilet bowl. What is old time religion for that boy, that family, for any citizen whose heart cries out at the dawning of another day of evil?

A Love Supreme

or many Sundays to come, we are going to tune our hearts to hear through the book of Job a word of promise and power for the church of God, for this church, and for any people bereft of what belongs to them; any people kept from sharing in what is good by powers that bind them. When we are done, you will never forget God’s word to you through Job.