Mark 8:27-38 I have a small collection of crosses in my office, made of a variety of different kinds of material – wire, ceramic, clay, wood, glass. There is one that is a souvenir from Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris; one is a souvenir from Mo-Ranch, the Presbyterian conference center in the Texas Hill Country. One was given to me by a man I met at a youth workcamp; he carved them out of purple heart wood and gave one to each of the chaperones. I have one that I made out of pieces of cut glass fused together. They are all beautiful. To say the cross is beautiful – this is something no one would have said back in the first century. We have mostly forgotten that the cross was an instrument of torture, a gruesome form of capital punishment. The cross doesn’t have the same impact today as […]
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No Longer Strangers, Part 6: Suiting Up
Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18 Ephesians 6:10-20 Anyone know what Charlie Sheen is up to these days? Some years ago, you might recall, he had a spectacularly public breakdown. Although, not if you asked him. If you asked Charlie he would have said, “Winning!” because that became his mantra. When asked about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, he said, “Not bipolar. It’s bi-winning! Winning here, winning there…” His conversations were colored with staccato bursts of “winning!” It appeared to be a kind of game – a mind game, where the object is saying it enough times in the hope that will make it true, talking oneself into believing it despite the clear reality. Winning! He started something, didn’t he? Winning is big. Winning is huge. #winning. Winning at life. Winning so much we get bored with winning. So. Much. Winning. It might get boring, but it has to be about winning, because […]
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