status on Rich and Poor

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

When we find worth by our affluence, it promises rest but brings stress, increasing demands, and a greater devotion to a god that will never love us and always forsake us.

Truth be told, whether we realize it or not, we all harbor romantic notions of aristocracy. Though we claim equality as a cultural value, there is a part of us that dreams of leisure, luxury, comfort,...

If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources...

As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come wi...

If we lack money and power, we can still feel successful if we have the respect of our peers. As a young minister without wealth or power, I loved being called “Reverend.” It was an ego trip for me wh...

The picture shows cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel of her infamous coupe, black-and-white hair waving wildly in the wind, oversi...

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Questions on the Road When we encounter today’s text, Jesus and the disciples continue to make their way from Capernaum to Jerusalem. According to Google Maps (the most trusted first century map appl...

Cultural commentator Richard Sennett has claimed that the primary architectural emblem of contemporary life is the airport departure lounge.

Leader: Friends, Paul reminds us that we are "called to be saints.” But we know that our lives often do not reflect this high calling. We forget who we are. We forget whose we are. But the invit...

Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost ...

The suffering addressed in 1 Peter is not random misfortune but the social cost of a new identity that challenges prevailing cultural norms.

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfac...

Status Quo is Latin for the mess we are in.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Broader Context of Philippians Paul is concerned that Judaizers (those that require Christians to follow the Torah) are going to corrup...

Systems are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting.

We can “know” something to be true, and then find it is not true after all. I recall confidently assertive to a student that, of course, the name of the region Perea (to the east of the Dead Sea) appe...

I read that Thornton Stringfellow, pastor of the Stevensburg Baptist Church in Virginia, had made one of the most popular arguments for slavery when Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century were decidin...

It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

All crises are judgments of history that call into question an existing state of affairs. They sift and sort the character and condition of a nation and its capacity to respond. The deeper the crisis,...

I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

Savior Jesus, we confess that all too often we are incapable of looking beyond our own ambitions. We get wrapped up in prestige and position, leaving you behind for our own aspirations. Forgive our mi...

Leader: Christ our king, We confess that our ideas of what the kingdom should be like are so different to yours. Where we seek first honor, glory, and praise from others When you would have us take ...

In order to exercise leadership on that challenge, they had to go beyond what people expected of them, risk testing some relationships, and move themselves and their organizations into unfamiliar terr...