Rev. Jill Edens, United Church of Chapel Hill
Though the disciples have left everything to follow Jesus, the discussion as they travel to Jerusalem reveals that they are profoundly unready for what is to come. In this pivotal moment we encounter blind Bartimaeus who Mark holds up as a model for discipleship: “As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’” [...]
Continue reading The Story of Two Sons
Last week, Council Program Associate Chris Liu-Beers was invited to Shaw Divinity School in Raleigh to preach during their weekly chapel service. Chris preached on immigration issues, with a focus on the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). [...]
Continue reading Becoming the Church Together – A Sermon on Immigration
Dr. Eloise Kaeck, Green Mountain Presbyterian Church (Green Mountain, NC)
The story told here in Acts 10 could be turned into a dramatic presentation in several acts, with its angel visitations, a Roman from the occupying army wanting to talk with a rough fisherman from Galilee and the surprise reversal Peter goes through. Peter thought of himself as Jewish, very Jewish. Peter lived in the cosmopolitan world of Joppa, a seaport on the Judean coast. Ships from the seven seas and caravan routes up the coastal plain made for all kinds of languages on the streets of Joppa, strange sights and sounds, colorful dress, exotic smells of food from Africa, Asia and Europe being sold in the bazaar. The world in which Peter lived and our world have much in common. North Carolina is a global village today just as Peter’s world was in the first century A.D. We think of ourselves as homogeneous, Euro-Americans. However, now North Carolina has people from Pakistan, Lebanon, India, China, not to mention Native-Americans, African-Americans and Latinos. The world in which Peter lived and our world have much in common. [...]
Continue reading Peter Gets Religion
Rev. Nancy Petty, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church (Raleigh)
While I’m quite sure that this Jeremiah passage doesn’t have anything of relevance to say about my decision to come to Pullen, it does, however, have something to say about one of the most significant social justice issues of our day—that of immigration. As you well know, immigration and immigration reform is one of the most debated political and social justice issues facing America. In recent months, the conversations on the issue of immigration have reached a boiling point—in some places, such as Arizona, the debate has turned violent. [...]
Continue reading A Christian Perspective on Immigration
Dr. Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School (Durham)
Now, imagine that God comes to you one day and says, “I need you and your family to gather all the animals living in North Carolina. I need you to feed them and protect them. I need you to build a floating farm and make sure they stay alive because the world around them is crumbling and dissolving. The places these animals have called home are disappearing, and I need you to make a home for them.” What would you say? [...]
Continue reading Living on an Ark
Rabbi Mark Strauss-Cohn, Temple Emanuel (Winston-Salem)
What is it about the rear side of a car that they are a primary location to display our affiliations: sports, political groups, rock bands, restaurants, ideologies, personal interests, vacation spots, synagogues (a very popular one here in Winston-Salem)… You see these signs everywhere. [...]
Continue reading When Tolerance and Coexistence Are (Not) Enough
Rev. Jean Newell, Creighton United Methodist Church (Phoenix, Arizona)
As he wrote his letter, I imagine Paul’s hope and prayer was that Philemon’s life had been so changed . . . so transformed . . . by his faith in Christ that the slave owner would not hand out punishment or death to the returned slave but would, instead, live out his faith and accept Onesimus as a brother in Christ. If there was to be any restitution made, Paul assured Philemon, he—Paul—would gladly be held accountable. [...]
Continue reading Living Out Faith
Dr. H. Stephen Shoemaker, Myers Park Baptist Church
This man is scary. To others, probably also to himself. He lived among the tombs. There was no place else to live. He wore no clothes, the text says, and had no home. Does that mean no family too? The diagnosis of the time: He was possessed by demons. We guess today a psychological disorder, but let’s not be armchair psychiatrists, two thousand years away. [...]
Continue reading This Man is Scary: Social Location, Sin & Healing
Rev. Nancy Petty, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church (Raleigh)
It’s an image I can’t get out of my mind: a rescuer washing goo off a pelican. The bird was found alive but coated in the oil slick making its way ashore along the Louisiana coastline. The rescuer, volunteering hours of her time, was gently and compassionately bathing the bird in hopes of giving it another chance in the wild. It is a sad but hopeful image from the Gulf of Mexico. And of all the images I have seen from this, the worst oil spill disaster our country has ever experienced, it is this one that causes me to reach for the remote as fast as I can to change the channel. [...]
Continue reading Shameless Love
Rev. Jonah Kendall, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church (Durham)
Where are we with this? Have we ever used our faith to challenge and disrupt? For on this Ascension Sunday when we’ve been called by Christ to proclaim a message of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, that is God’s love for all, when we have heard in Acts about Paul and Silas, about how the proclamation of this love can lead to imprisonment, we’re invited to ask ourselves how our lives show forth Christ’s Gospel, a Gospel that precisely because it proclaims a love and well-being for all is radical and disruptive. [...]
Continue reading Listen, But Don’t Emulate
Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz, Judea Reform Congregation (Durham)
This past week, we read the first section of the book of Exodus, the story of our formation as a people. At the end of Genesis, we learned that we came to the land of Egypt on the brink of starvation. Egypt was a land of opportunity, with its storehouses of grain and its fertile soil for grazing. The early Israelites settled in the region of Goshen, and flourished there. Joseph, who had emigrated earlier, worked his way up to a position of power and influence. He lived amongst the Egyptians and even saved them from impending famine with his wisdom, foresight and organizational skills. [...]
Continue reading We Were Strangers Too
Rev. Dr. Jill Crainshaw, Wake Forest Divinity School (Winston-Salem)
We were an eclectic bunch—divinity school professor, mother of children with special needs, teacher of teenagers, woman who battles Lupus, man who is legally blind, and teacher who has a rare type of epilepsy. All of the students but one are enrolled in, or have graduated from, our Masters of Divinity degree program. Each week of Summer Session II, we discussed a book about ministry, theology, and disabilities. [...]
Continue reading A Sermonic Feast
Rev. Peter JB Carman, Binkley Baptist Church (Chapel Hill)
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia about baptism, it seems he had a whole lot more than water on his mind. He was writing to a church divided right from the very beginning. While he was welcoming in the non Jewish pagans, others weren’t so sure. While he was trying to help negotiate the beginnings of a multi-cultural Christian faith, others were, even from the very beginning, more comfortable with those who were their own people. Jews had every reason to be suspicious of Romans—after all they had suffered under the hand of their occupation governments for many years. [...]
Continue reading Inviting the Uninvited
Rev. Deborah Patterson
Babylonian captivity. I believe we are there again, both literally and figuratively. We are literally in Babylon as American troops serve in an unending war in Iraq, the new name for that land. And, working with parish nurses, daily I hear stories which attest that we are figuratively being held captive by a health system that excludes millions, bankrupts millions, and keeps millions in jobs they despise but need for health insurance. Doctors are held captive by reimbursement plans that penalize them for spending more than 7 or 8 minutes with patients. Nurses are held captive by staffing patterns that keep them working longer shifts, with more and sicker and patients to care for. Churches are being held captive by health insurance costs that prevent them from being able to call full-time pastors. [...]
Continue reading No Joy For You
Ellen Davis, Duke Divinity School (Durham)
Reading the Bible is my line of work, yet for years I read past the first chapter’s detailed attention to the food supply, as have my fellow biblical scholars. I now realize that my profession’s obliviousness about food in the Bible points to a deep and worrisome difference between a modern cultural mindset and the culture that all the biblical writers represent. The difference comes down to this: for them, eating and agriculture have to do with God, and for us they do not. [...]
Continue reading Being a Creature Means You Eat
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