RoboPreacher

For Lent St. John United is hosting a blog for personal devotions during this season. I preached about the concept of Lent in general, and the nature of sin specifically, for the First Sunday of Lent (3/13). The St. John United Lent Blog is hosting my sermon. Here's a link to the sermon. Blessings to you all on your Lenten journey.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Prayer: Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts dwell on the gift of life, prosperity and blessings you have set before us. Amen. Intro: It’s Love the Earth Sunday: Have you made a valentine to that favorite shade tree of yours yet? What about that that favorite trail of yours? No? Well, me either. It isn’t too late, though, I suppose. It is no accident that Love the Earth Sunday is on Valentine’s Day weekend. Interfaith Power and Life, along with local partners, such as Earth Ministry, have coordinated a national Valentine’s Day celebration for the Earth this weekend. On this Valentine’s Day celebration, congregations across North America are reflecting on loving their fellow creation, the Earth. The goal of Love the Earth Sunday is to get discussion of the climate into pews this, and I have gotten the impression that this goal is being achieved swimmingly. It is worth noting, though, that bringing concerns for the e...

Right now I am physically in an in-between place. My summer with the Metro Lutheran has come to an end, and now I am in respite at my folk’s place for a few days until I start my journey west to begin my year-long internship. The back drop for this post is three different news articles. The first is one I wrote for the Metro Lutheran concerning women’s ordination, the second is an article about inclusive language in contemporary, North American, mainline churches (how’s that for a string of adjectives!), and the last is a fantastic article about the men and women in North America today. Briefly, a few words (well, adjectives) about myself: male, white, and lower-middle-class. Also, in-between places. You will have to forgive my lack of citations, I do not have access to my books, they are in transit. The question of gender is one that is of particular interest to me. One, I was not raised by my biological father, yet I did, and do, have many wonderful, loving male ...

Recently I've been able to begin writing and researching for a series I pitched earlier this spring. The series is about congregations which are greening themselves. In previous blog entries I've discussed ecologically concerned theology. It's been very meaningful for me to explore how theology prompts ethical ecological considerations. ( Here is a link to a theologian I've been able to talk with at the Metro Lutheran .) What the linked theologian, myself and so many are after is, what role does theology have in ecological-talk. I worked on a paper about a Theology of the Cross and ecology. It was a lot of fun, but it was frustrating, too. I felt like I had to spend at least a 1/3 of the paper explaining why ecology isn't a mere addition to theology, but an essential consideration in theology. For one of the the stories in the series, I visited Lutheran Church of the Reformation , in St. Louis Park. This congregation has been concerned and a leading caring for cre...

(This photo has been cropped and digitally edited to avoid giving the impression I am endorsing a particular church.) To go back to ecology and the Trinity, I read theologian, Amos Yong's synthesis of Moltmann's notion of Trinity: "If in trinitarian theology the Father ( sic ), Son, and Spirit are divine precisely insofar as they have their identity in subsistence (interpenetrating) relations with the other two persons, so also in a trinitarian theology of creation particular things are valued for what they are precisely because they are constituted by their unity in dynamic relationship with others (other things, creatures, human beings, and God.)" I liked this summary, and I think Yong articulates the implications well: "This framework prevents and overly anthropocentric understanding of the created world, even as it enables proper emphasis on humankind with a more cosmocentric perspective. " Yong's particular interest is not ecology, though. Yong, em...

I hope you all had a blessed Easter. As we patiently journeyed through Lent I mentioned I was excited to talk about some other dimensions of the Trinity. With that in mind, I would like to discuss how our image Trinity affects our ecological attitude. Given, that lately I've been focusing on Moltmann, I will begin our thoughts with a quote by him ( which, this time I do not apologize for my reliance upon him ). Rather than laying out the argument about Christianity's history of an abusive relationship with the earth, I will build off the assumption that we all agree about this history. If, however, any readers are curious about the history, I commend Lynn White's wonderful essay, The Historical Root of Our Ecological Crisis . Anyway, how are Christians to begin living into a new attitude? Moltmann suggests something quite easy and historical: "We need only return to the original wisdom of our own religious tradition and rediscover what was repressed by the absolutist a...