When We Are Well

by | Oct 14, 2012 | health care, sermon 2012, social justice

Today, we are going to feel our way with America’s towering health care crisis. In this, we are certainly politically stuck, but we are jammed up in many other dimensions as well. Costs are out of control, our weight and our diets are out of control, fear of death and disability has control of us, for we have lost the courage of being humbly human; we want to live forever. To cap it off, unlike the rest of the industrialized world, many Americans refuse to consider health care a right, rather than a privilege . . .

The End of the Earth

by | Oct 7, 2012 | climate change, environment, sermon 2012, stewardship

According to Genesis, God gave us “dominion,” that we might “fill the earth and subdue it!” Now, this commandment is rather different from all the others in that we have performed it eagerly, to the letter of the law. The Earth: we filled it, and we subdued it. But unlike a horse or a tractor which the master takes back to the shed when its work is done, we don’t know who our master is any more, or when to rest. We are going to keep filling this earth and subduing it until it is subdone!

From a Distance

by | Sep 23, 2012 | abortion, sermon 2012, social justice, womens rights

Today, we are going to think through abortion. In this matter, the wings of our citizenry, right and left, seem hardly attached to the same bird. While our prayer for the wings of a dove must never amount to muddling toward the middle, afraid to take a stand, we can bend down and draw out real thought.

Seek the Low Seat

by | Sep 9, 2012 | disability, identity, sermon 2012, social justice

Could it be more plain that nations yearning to practice only strength, whether financial, legal, military or moral, segregating and oppressing their weak, their workers, their aged, their disabled, their poor, their sick, their least, their lost—that such nations always ultimately lose their bearings and collapse in weakness? Why? Because the human race was not for winning. The human race was for learning how to become humane. Care for what is weak is the core value of the left wing; and all share in its benefits.