Calvary Episcopal Church - Memphis, TN: Recent Episodes
Calvary Episcopal Church
Calvary is an eclectic bunch of Christian people who don’t all think the same thoughts, or dress the same way, or vote for the same candidates, or even believe all the same things about the mystery of God and what it means to be human. But we believe we need each other because of our differences, not in spite of them. So, whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever joys or burdens you carry, you are welcome at Calvary Episcopal Church.
I am convinced that there has never been a better time to be the Church. Never. Because our mission has never been clearer. Not to imitate the culture, not to withdraw from the culture, but to transfigure the culture, to become a community where the light of Christ is so visible that other people begin to recognize themselves as beloved, too.
We can assume what God wants and what other Christians want is some holier or wiser or just more put-together life than ours. But what we celebrate at this altar every single week is the thoroughly spent life of Jesus. The body and the blood of a life that even at that terrible extreme of human experience could still be blessed and used by God for the healing of this world. The body stripped of everything that still blesses, still heals.
A weed is not bad in and of itself. A weed is just something that is unexpected or unintended, and that means that, of course, at some point in our lives, we are all weeds.
God is love. And the only sacrifices Love calls us to make are the sacred efforts love will freely, gladly, unhesitatingly make for its beloved.
Entering this world and bringing the good news of a life-giving, liberating, restoring God is risky.
The stranger at the door of your tent may be the living God, looking for an entrance into your life.
“Deep healing always comes in that gentle, merciful space where genuine encounter is made possible. Our deepest wounds just can’t be healed by force or from afar.”
Before there is healing, there is courage. Before there is a miracle, there is hope. After twelve years of rejection, she still reaches — and maybe that's the first miracle: the courage to believe that God has not abandoned her.
What if understanding the Trinity doesn’t mean anything more than understanding that we need each other, that we actually must be in relationship?
God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. All of us. Each precious created thing that ever was. Every creature. Every stone. Every atom. These are real because they are given. And they are given, because that’s who God is. God gives. God gives life. Always.
You will not lose your way because I am the way. You do not have to go searching for truth because I am the truth. You do not have to fear that life will slip away from you. Because I am the life.
Our duty as God's sheep is not to sit idly while God's protection and love wash over us, or to expect to be carried, but rather to continue walking even if we are in the valley of the shadow of death. It's to continue listening for the voice of God, even as we witness thieves breaking in and as the voices of strangers grow discordant and loud and drown everything else out.
How much smaller and how much sadder a gospel it would be to think God loves us because we are right, rather than because God's very nature is to love. How much paltrier would the good news be if it were that some of us are forgiven because we happen to be right, rather than because it is God's nature to forgive us all.
And into our demented lives, Jesus comes uninvited, saying something like, “I see you, and you can live in this shattered world in a different way. You can take the fragments and scars and make something whole again, even beautiful.” Peace be with you.
Maybe if our love loses the last of its interest in anything it might get in return, maybe then we’ll find ourselves alive at last, in that eternal kingdom Jesus kept telling us has been right here among us all along.
New life starts in the dark, a seed in the ground, a child in the womb, Christ, in the tomb. The darkness is not abandonment. The darkness is not the end. The darkness is not where God stops. The darkness is where God is already at work, which means that the places we fear the most are very often the very places where God is closest.
Because this is how it is. And this world of distorted and destructive power, of fear turned to anger and rage. On a grand scale, how the forces of control can conspire to crush what it will not allow. And in the smaller worlds we inhabit, where this simple unraveling of what we counted on sends us into a parallel universe marked by loneliness and gloom.
It's a love that will even set aside its own seat at the table, set aside its privilege, its power, even its precious dignity if need be, so it can kneel down and give of itself for the sake of its beloved, no matter how dusty and looked down upon the actual physical work of love may be.
But more than an itinerary for these next seven days, we have a map that will help us on those other sojourns, the ones when we can’t see beyond the bend in the road. Because this isn’t just a map of Jerusalem. It’s a map of all the places that God goes.
Come out of hiding, come out of shame, come out of addiction, of fear, come out of the story that has convinced you that this is as alive as you will ever be. Come out.
The Rev. Dr. Heber M. Brown, III is a nationally recognized leader in faith-based social innovation and food justice. After serving nearly fourteen years as a pastor in Baltimore—where he witnessed the impacts of food apartheid—he founded the Black Church Food Security Network. The network now partners with nearly 250 Black congregations and Black farmers to advance food sovereignty and economic justice. An Ashoka Fellow, Dr. Brown serves on the board of Bread for the World and as senior church advisor to Justis Connection. He is the author of the forthcoming book Nothing More Sacred: Radical Stories of Black Church Faith, Food, and Freedom.
If everyone always got exactly what they deserved, and the universe finally behaved like we think it should, what would be lost? Well, I think the grace of this moment would be lost. This encounter that a man born blind had with the grace of God in the person of Jesus would be lost. Because the only one in this story to stay open to what’s actually taking place is the one who was willing to set aside everything.
Bishop Deon K. Johnson is the eleventh bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, where his ministry centers faith, justice, and joy. A native of Barbados, he brings a global perspective shaped by resilience, community, and hope. Bishop Johnson is deeply committed to cultivating belonging, especially for LGBTQIA+ people and others who have been marginalized, affirming all as God’s beloved. Known for his warmth, storytelling, and sacred laughter, he delights in good conversations and imaginative hope. His leadership invites the church to live more fully into love made visible through justice, compassion, and courageous faith.
Stephen Cook has served as senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Memphis since 2010. Under his leadership, the congregation has embraced its identity as a center of Christian community throughout the week, recognizing that ministry happens far beyond Sunday mornings. Cook guides Second Baptist with a vision “to know Christ and to know its village,” forming disciples shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus while loving neighbors in tangible ways. His pastoral leadership emphasizes shared life, spiritual formation, and deep engagement with the surrounding community, cultivating a church rooted in presence, relationship, and faithful witness.
Jonathan Lee Walton, Ph.D., is a social ethicist, religious educator, and the eighth president of Princeton Theological Seminary. A leading voice on American religion, he is the author of Watch This! and A Lens of Love, and his scholarship has appeared widely in academic journals and national media including The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. Prior to Princeton, Dr. Walton served at Harvard University and Wake Forest University, where he was dean of the School of Divinity. A graduate of Morehouse College and Princeton Seminary, his work engages ethics, race, media, and public life with intellectual rigor and moral imagination.
Kontji Anthony is a veteran journalist and host of Live at 9 on Memphis CBS affiliate WREG-TV. With a 30-year career in anchoring, reporting, producing, and writing, she has been recognized by the Tennessee General Assembly for her contributions to broadcasting. Anthony is also the creator, CEO, and co-founder of Youdle, a tech platform connecting families to fresh groceries. She serves on the boards of The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis and New Memphis and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., The BOW Collective, NABJ, NATAS, and ACT | The App Association. Her work bridges media, entrepreneurship, and community impact.
Drew Jackson is a poet, speaker, public theologian, and Managing Director of Formation at the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is the author of God Speaks Through Wombs, a finalist for the Christian Book Award, and Touch the Earth, named one of Sojourners’ Best Books of 2023. Drew also co-hosts CAC’s Everything Belongs podcast. His work blends poetry, theology, and social reflection, inviting readers into embodied, justice-rooted spirituality. Living in Brooklyn with his wife and twin daughters, Drew finds joy in coaching his daughters' basketball team and cultivating faith through creativity, presence, and everyday life.
Clark College and Virginia Theological Seminary, her ministry spans multiple dioceses and emphasizes liturgical excellence, collaborative leadership, and institutional vision. As head of staff and vestry chair, she nurtures both spiritual depth and organizational health. Dean Churchwell is known for her commitment to inclusive ministry, trauma-informed pastoral care, digital evangelism, and leadership development. She lives in Oklahoma City with her husband, Logan, their three children, and a beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
Friends, please hear the good news of the gospel. God does not require you to be brave in order to be saved, and God will not condemn you, even for being afraid. I only aspire to the bravery of Nicodemus because I recognize how my fear of being wrong, my fear of being thought a fool, my fear that no one would love me, not even God, if they really knew me … I need this rabbi’s bravery because I know all too well how these familiar human fears send us back down the slide, into this world of condemnation and away from God’s unconditional love. The one love that will never back away from you.
Dr. Yolanda Pierce serves as professor and dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. A distinguished scholar, her research focuses on Literature and Religion, Womanist Theology, and African American Religions. She is the author of several influential books, including In My Grandmother’s House, Hell Without Fires, and The Wounds Are the Witness. Dr. Pierce’s work weaves together history, theology, and lived experience, illuminating how Black faith traditions hold memory, confront injustice, and cultivate healing. As an educator and leader, she is deeply committed to forming thoughtful, justice-oriented leaders for the church, academy, and public life.
Rabbi Micah D. Greenstein—often called “everyone’s rabbi”—is a central figure in Memphis’s faith community and the national Reform Jewish movement. He has served Temple Israel, Memphis’s historic 170-year-old congregation, for more than three decades and is its eighth senior rabbi. Greenstein’s leadership is marked by intergenerational engagement, pastoral depth, and the enduring relevance of Reform Jewish values. Beyond congregational life, he is investing deeply in shaping the next generation of Reform rabbis and strengthening Jewish communal life in a post–October 7 world. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to faith, justice, and the shared religious fabric of Memphis.
Danté Stewart is a writer, speaker, and public theologian whose work explores race, religion, and politics in contemporary life. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness, Comment, and on CNN. Stewart is the author of the award-winning memoir Shoutin’ in the Fire, which earned the Georgia Author of the Year Award. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from Clemson University and is currently studying at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Through incisive analysis and personal narrative, Stewart invites readers and listeners into honest reckonings with faith, history, and the pursuit of justice.
Temptation is not about appetite. It is about autonomy. Secure yourself. Define yourself. Prove yourself. And Jesus refuses. “I live by what God speaks.” “I serve God alone.” He does not grab. He entrusts. I am convinced that sin, at its root, is trying to save yourself. And forgiveness is God refusing to abandon you when you cannot.
Forged from his Memphis gospel roots and shaped by Houston’s vibrant jazz scene, Kirk Whalum is a singular voice in contemporary music. Discovered by jazz legend Bob James, Whalum went on to become an in-demand session musician for artists including Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Quincy Jones, and Barbra Streisand—most famously performing the iconic saxophone solo on I Will Always Love You. With more than 30 solo projects, including the chart-topping For You, and the Gospel According to Jazz series, Whalum is a twelve-time Grammy® nominee and 2011 Grammy® winner. He holds a Master’s in Theology and hosts the daily podcast The Bible In Your Ear, blending music, faith, and service.
Every time something has tried to dim this city, the people of Memphis have risen. The culture of Memphis has risen. The stories of Memphis have risen. The faith of this city has risen. I think that God's vision for us, Memphis, is not just for us to survive, but is meant for Memphis to be a pasture. A city where creativity feeds people, where culture nourishes people, and where community restores people.
We all carry personal ashes- grief, addiction, regret, exhaustion. The forgiveness we withhold. The people we quietly despise. And we carry collective ashes -the injustices we lament and the systems we quietly benefit from and prefer not to see.
The same Jesus who was transfigured so magnificently that day taught us that the ones God calls beloved and even speaks through are not limited to a few famous prophets on a mountain a long time ago. Jesus says God's beloved ones are all around us, wherever we are, every day, if only we're given eyes to see our human sisters and brothers as the bearers of God image, God's image that they truly are.
We start by imagining ourselves as more than a bunch of broken-hearted, or just plain broken people. Can we imagine that we are salt? That we are capable of shining? And when we do that, can we imagine that we are salt for others or light for others?
When someone has nothing to prove to us and doesn’t need our approval to validate them, our souls rest a little easier, and we really can see the world a little more clearly for what it is...Maybe that’s meekness. People didn’t find their burdens lightened in the presence of Jesus because he was insecure and told everybody only what they wanted to hear. The meekness of Jesus was, and this is Rowan Williams again, “a habit of calm attentiveness, stillness, freedom from the fretting worry of keeping control.”
Dr. King said, “There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.” He lived out the absurd, but liberating conviction that the only place in a sacrificial system a follower of Jesus will faithfully occupy is as its victim, its lamb...The good news is that there really is abundant life and liberation in the way of Jesus.
As I get older, and lose more of the people I love, I hang much less hope on my rational comprehension of whatever awaits us on the far side of death. Scripture itself isn’t very clear about the details and I haven’t yet been visited by an angel with inside information. But my trust in the truth and the hope of the scriptures somehow has only deepened over the years. And I find myself, if not more certain about the details, so much more confident in the divine Love that awaits us. I do believe that somehow all the vulnerable infants, and all the anxious parents, the hopeful, foreign wise ones and even the violent tyrants, all exist only within the absurdly wide mercy of God. So do you. So do I. So do all of the living. So do all of the dead.
“Let it be unto me according to your will,” was not an act of blind obedience or resignation to a fate. It was an opening of a space in Mary to receive the gift of God. And in doing so, Mary wasn’t setting herself apart from us. She was showing us the way.What do you need emptying of, dear virgin friends, so that God can prime you with glorious gifts, that your life might be given away with no expectation of return?
But if we wake up resolved to choose a relationship with God, we can be fairly certain that we’ll be asked to do things that might make the neighbors talk, that might push us toward people we’d otherwise avoid, that we’ll be asked to stand up for truths that aren’t popular or even sensible. I hate to say it, but sometimes it might even look like our lives are on fire.
Mutual grace seems to be part of Paul's plan to unite the early Christian Church, and every generation of believers has had to grapple with this question of what is foundational to our faith. This ongoing work requires both the intervention of the Holy Spirit and I think a measure of sacred imagination to envision what has not yet come to be. And in this season of Advent, we are invited to slow down to exhale in the midst of the busyness of the season as we prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming of God incarnate.
The only moment we really ever have to become the self that Jesus is calling and loving and inviting us to be is the moment we’re in right now.
Your King is with you. Not far above, but right beside you. Not condemning, but companioning. Not turning away, but turning toward you.
We just keep showing up together in the present with the lives we actually have. And maybe find that the risen Christ does keep showing up among us, not in the ways we planned for. But with a new word, a new wisdom for a new day that we were never meant to anticipate.
Because this life is where we are now, and wouldn’t it be extraordinary if we could flip the script around, so that instead of projecting qualities of this broken world onto the next, we could instead take the hints we get about the wholeness that awaits us and get about the business of living that way now and here?
Maybe All Saints’ Day is the day we’re reminded that the Church isn’t the place where we get free of enemies Jesus asks us to love. It’s where he traps us with some of the most obnoxious ones and says, “Here we are, folks. Shall we get on with it?”
If you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough, if you’ve been carrying fear, shame, exhaustion, or rage, hear this good news. The Lord stands beside you.
And yet a door to another world still stands open to every moment. A door to abetter way. Which is to see your life, not as an achievement of your savvy and yourwill, but as a gift. A gift from a loving God who doesn’t trick us into faithfulness orforce us into submission, because that’s not love. A gift from the God who woos uswith blessings that are given in spite of our selfish shrewdness, not as rewards.Blessings given simply because it is the nature of love to bless. A door stands open.But you won’t be tricked or shoved through it. Because it’s open to life in the realmof gift and love. It will still cost you everything you’ve tricked this world out of thusfar. But could you send all of that to the far side of the river, and limp through thedoor into another way of being alive?
And so this little moment of counsel from twenty-five-some-odd centuries ago helps me learn how to do that. What to do when I find myself waking up in a strange place that I don’t recognize and can only mutter: I don’t understand this world, I don’t want this, I don’t know what to do with all this. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
"What would it take for you to give up, at least a little, the credit-taking game and step a little more fully into a deeper faith in your belovedness by God?"
"What is real life? It’s not one thing. It’s not just suffering. It’s not just joy. It’s not just fulfillment. It’s all of it, held together by love."
Especially when we can’t find it, when we insist that it is still true, that there is a balm in Gilead, we are making a bold and audacious proclamation: Proclaiming that all the while there is still beauty and kindness, that repair is just as real as destruction.
Imagine her thankfulness when she sees that there’s someone who loves her enough to sacrifice everything to go find her and bring her home.
One thing a little time away has made clear to this sinner is that I need you if the old patterns are to be broken in me. I need a community of people trying to listen to Jesus and to live by the light of his love.
What if we admitted we're all afraid? It takes real courage to do this. It's a radical move, which is why fear and not hate is the opposite of love.
We pray in order to be, to be in the presence of God, being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and that the miracle we get from prayer is God’s presence and God’s hearing us, not a particular outcome. And though that understanding lives somewhere in my heart and in my soul and a big place in my mind, the truth is that prayer remains a mystery for me.
The kingdom of God is real.What if we choose this story? What if we tell this story to ourselves and to everyone we meet on the way, and to every house we enter, and at every meal we eat? What could it look like to live inside that story, to imagine a world where the harvest is plentiful, where we all get to be there, where the wolves and the lambs lie down together?
Real freedom will cost you your illusions. But it will give you your name, your story, your voice, your joy. Your freedom. And it will be loud, and bright, and contagious.
My prayer for us and for the church is that we will fight with all our might and with as little fear as possible any effort, message, or policy that attempts to restrict or confine the love of God. The hope of the world may depend upon it.
The challenge of believing in the Trinity is not figuring out the formula; the challenge of believing in the Trinity is living a life that reflects our beautiful understanding of God as more than we can grasp or imagine.
Pentecost doesn’t reverse the effects of Babel so much as it breaks open our imagination. Opens us to the possibility of connection and reconciliation even in a world of difference and diversity.
“About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” I wonder what would sustain me in that dark night? What stories or poems would emerge from my internal library? And if not in a jail cell, then in the other dark watches of illness or despair, or of the trap of spiraling worry.
So, for all the hardship and need we see and experience, let’s commit to being a community that tends to its joy and its curiosity. Which means we not only learn together and pray together and serve together, but that we also eat and drink together, sing and laugh together, rejoice in all the ways we can together.
For most of our history, we Christians have been re-drawing the lines between who’s in and who’s out, between whose beliefs are correct and whose are not. For one group, fundamentalists might be the problem; for another, it’s woke liberals. For yet another, it could be terrorists or immigrants or environmentalists, rich people or poor people, or Muslims or atheists or God knows what else. Our hearts harden, our beliefs solidify, and we reduce God to a tidy formula, and we are on the verge of destroying everything that is beautiful and true and holy.
Just as Ananias embraced Saul as family by calling him, ‘Brother Saul,’ Ruthie and I will always think of you as ‘Sister Calvary.’ We are family to each other. You will always be in my and Ruthie’s hearts. And God’s ongoing story of conversion in all our hearts will never end.
Go be a Thomas. Not Thomas, the cool skeptic of tradition. But Thomas, who knows that an incarnate relationship with complicated people is what we’re made for, not membership in a religious club we join by storing beliefs in the attic of our mind, like furniture under bedsheets no one even thinks to sit on anymore.
Let the women at the tomb be our guides back into a love that’s at work in our lives still, right now, right here. Today.
I feel a kinship with the women in this kind of moment, in which the story is still unfurling. And I am grateful and profoundly moved by their witness, their belief, with only the barest bit of news to go on.
So say the prayers, whether it feels like anyone’s listening or not. Jesus did. Say the prayers, if only to remember that you’re not the only one whose ever felt like everything that matters is unsolved in their heart. Say the prayers as a way to be still, expand your soul to hold a little more life and hurt and, maybe even to pass back into this world something a little less like violence, and a little more like love.
When Jesus stood up and wrapped a towel around himself, in essence he taught them, ‘Do not be afraid to stoop down and offer the most humble service imaginable to one another. It is no more than I have done for you.’
Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Growing up in a place with a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe), he finds that language might be the most redeeming. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. Any artist of words inspires him: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton, Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson, Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Davis is the 14th president of LeMoyne-Owen College. For the past 25 years, Davis has had the honor of pastoring St. Paul Baptist Church, Holmes Road, where he has witnessed the transformative power of faith in action. Alongside his pastoral work, he served for 17 years as both a faculty member and administrator at Memphis Theological Seminary, experiences that deepened his understanding of ministry within both church and academic contexts. In 2024, he was named the 14th president of LeMoyne-Owen College, a role he believes to be a divinely appointed extension of his calling. For Davis, faith is not confined to Sunday worship—it is a way of life, a guiding force in every season and every role he has held. Whether in the pulpit, the classroom, or now on the campus of a historically Black college, he has always viewed his work as ministry.
Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Growing up in a place with a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe), he finds that language might be the most redeeming. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. Any artist of words inspires him: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton, Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson, Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
As Temple Israel’s eighth senior rabbi, Greenstein’s tenure and legacy live through intergenerational engagement and relevance of Reform Jewish values. In addition to serving as a pastoral anchor for his congregation, Greenstein is pouring his energy into innovating the pipeline for the next generation of Reform Jewish rabbis as well as building a healthy future for the religious and cultural fabric of post-October 7 Israel.
To taste and see and smell that we’re loved like that can change us. It can heal us. It can raise dead parts of us into new life. And it can make us into people whose lives and loves keep expanding just like these gospel stories do, until they include more and more of the world around us and more and more of the worlds within us.
Prior to her election and ordination as bishop of Mississippi, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Dorothy Sanders Wells served as rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church, Germantown, Tennessee, from 2013 until arriving in Mississippi in May 2024. Wells is committed to the work of community dialogue, racial healing, and justice and equity for all of God's people. She is an award-winning freelance essayist, and many of her works--most of which are centered around issues of justice and equity--can be found at muckrack.com/dorothy-wells.
Chu serves as an editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure, teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina, and parish associate for storytelling and witness at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in California. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper, 2013) and Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand (Convergent/Penguin Random House, 2025). He is also the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, he lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then, she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals. Her new book, Coming Down to Earth, from Convergent Books, will be out in 2026.
Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then, she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals. Her new book, Coming Down to Earth, from Convergent Books, will be out in 2026.Chu serves as an editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure, teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina, and parish associate for storytelling and witness at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in California. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America and Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand. He is also the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, he lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Like Jesus, the fatted calf nourishes and sustains others. Like the Eucharist, the meat from the fatted calf becomes a little part of all who partake in it. The fatted calf reminds us of the self-giving love of Jesus.
Fisher serves as the Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis, where he embraces the church's deep-rooted legacy in the community. With a background in computer science and theology, he founded #UPTheVote901 to empower voters and elevate political engagement. Faith is a guiding force in his life, inspiring him to champion justice and inclusivity. Earle finds joy in family, sharing life with his wife Denise, son Jalen, and granddaughter Karter Ann. Currently, he is exploring new avenues to inspire others and foster meaningful connections within the community.
Lammers (she/her) is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and a third-generation clergy after her mother and grandfather – a fact that still surprises her more than anyone else! She has been a local church pastor, a divinity school administrator and adjunct faculty member, a hospital chaplain specializing in trauma and palliative medicine, and a student affairs administrator at several colleges and universities. Her professional and theological interests include the practice of public theology, social justice and radical inclusion, and encouraging individuals to use their theological imaginations to better connect with God. She has a passion for making church relevant and fun!
Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church’s Complicity in Racism, How to Fight Racism, and How to Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition. He is also a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. Tisby has co-hosted the “Pass the Mic” podcast since its inception seven years ago. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. He is a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN’s New Day program. He speaks nationwide on racial justice, U.S. history, and Christianity. Tisby earned his PhD in history and studies race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century.
This is a God who looks upon us and sees that we aren’t yet what we could be, we are not at full blossom, and so this God shows up not with an axe but with a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of mulch, patience, and hope.
Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church’s Complicity in Racism, How to Fight Racism, and How to Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition. He is also a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. Tisby has co-hosted the “Pass the Mic” podcast since its inception seven years ago. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. He is a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN’s New Day program. He speaks nationwide on racial justice, U.S. history, and Christianity. Tisby earned his PhD in history and studies race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century.
Kim-Kort, (she/they) is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University. She juggles various jobs, including speaking, writing, and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity raising three athletic children who have games all over the DMV. She believes: “In all times, the Church, and especially the local church, gives me hope. Most days, I don’t understand this hope, how it comes from something that seems so fallible, but I know in my cells that it is because God is present in the places I least expect and always the most human. These places and people teach me to keep looking and showing up—that always stays with me.”
Kim-Kort, (she/they) is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University. She juggles various jobs, including speaking, writing, and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity raising three athletic children who have games all over the DMV. She believes: “In all times, the Church, and especially the local church, gives me hope. Most days, I don’t understand this hope, how it comes from something that seems so fallible, but I know in my cells that it is because God is present in the places I least expect and always the most human. These places and people teach me to keep looking and showing up—that always stays with me.”
We have Abram in a world in which things die and bleed and nourish one another. A world in which one being is sacrificed for the life of another all the time and everywhere. That world, not one cleaned up of its wildness and its gore, is where God is met. This Earth, not the heavens, is what God gives to all of us as a sacred gift.
The Rev. Dr. Craig is a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, community development nerd, wannabe poet, and personal photographer for her two-year-old identical twin girls. Growing up in rural Alabama as the only Asian kid other than her brother shaped her curiosity about marginalized places, community, and belonging. She’s most at home in borderland spaces, whether that be leading an arts and literacy youth organization in North Philadelphia, participating in university civic engagement in Camden, New Jersey, or pastoring a Germantown church dedicated to serving their immigrant and Latinx neighbors. With the help of her church, she’s practicing deep loving with folks in the midst of violence, homelessness, and hunger.
Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry.
In addition to the noontime experience, Calvary offers Dialogue: The Lenten Preaching Series Podcast, recorded live at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, each Wednesday. You are invited to these live podcast recordings with our guests each Wednesday evening.
Ekundayo Bandele is a renowned playwright and theater director whose work has significantly impacted the American theater landscape. His play “Judas Hands” premiered at Cleveland’s Karamu House in 1997, and his subsequent works, such as “If Scrooge Was a Brother” and “Take the Soul Train to Christmas,” have been produced at theaters across the country, including Houston’s Ensemble Theatre and Chicago’s ETA Creative Arts Foundation. In 2006, Bandele founded Hattiloo Theatre in Memphis, TN. As its CEO, he curates annual seasons of plays and programs that celebrate Black culture. He successfully raised 10 million dollars to build and expand Hattiloo Theatre, including a state-of-the-art facility and an endowment. He has also led international initiatives, such as a theater management course in Sudan.
Dr. Gafney is the author of A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church and translator of its biblical selections. She is the author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne, a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah in the Wisdom series; Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel; and co-editor of The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible. She is an Episcopal priest, and a former Army chaplain and congregational pastor in the AME Zion Church. She is a preacher, teacher, activist, published poet, and an amateur watercolorist.
A dedicated iconographer with over 24 years of experience, Fromberg is currently working on a commissioned series depicting twenty-six Anglican and Episcopal saints. Paul's research explores the fascinating intersection of liturgy, ritual, and expanded states of consciousness. He teaches liturgical leadership alongside his ministry, emphasizing the vital connection between culture, spirituality, and effective leadership. Paul is also the author of The Art of Transformation (Church Publishing, 2017) and The Art of Disruption (Seabury Books, 2021).
These ashes will not burn you, far from it. A surprising possibility is that the gritty, dark touch of these ashes may feel like a needed relief.
Don’t live by Pharaoh’s rules. Live as the gifted bearers of God’s image that you are. Such was the deep wisdom of the Torah. Such is the life Moses and Elijah and Jesus kept calling people back to in different places, different times, is it not?
Down through the trapdoor, God’s kingdom is a place where grace is an antidote to violence and retribution. It’s a realm where tenderness and kindness are signs of strength and resistance because once we go down we understand that the love and generosity we show is a revelation of who we are and how we choose to live.
Jesus loved and sought out people on the margins. Foreigners and sinners. The unclean and the poor. Women and heretics and more. He sought them out because he wanted them to see they were beloved and blessed by God.
We often make the deep water a metaphor for going out on mission work to distant places or places we have never been. Peter and the disciples would later venture into places across Europe and Asia they never could have imagined. But I wonder if deep water could also be a metaphor for the uttermost places within our hearts, our minds, our souls.
Whether we noticed or not, Jesus was present to us today. And he will be tomorrow. Whether in the face of a neighbor who needs our compassion and our care, or whether in the Divine Love that asks us, in some moments, to set aside our striving and our doing and simply rest in its healing embrace.
Jesus came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and to call us to believe all over again in the idea of Jubilee, even when you can’t see it, even when you’re not sure if it could happen or has ever happened.
Jesus saw nonviolence not as a passive response, but as a way of directly confronting evil in such a manner that he, and we, do not succumb to it. Instead, he, and we, show it for what it is to the world and to the perpetrators themselves. Jesus sought and still seeks to replace the way of violence with The Way of Love.
As we step into another year of life on Earth together, perhaps one resolution we could make is to take seriously what energies we let our lives be exposed to. And then commit to return, over and again, week after week, to be nourished and transformed by these living sacraments to the way, not of violence, but of love.
We’ve all got different ideas about what constitutes a disaster: everyday mishaps, personal tragedies, political nightmares, global catastrophes. But by definition, from its roots, a disaster is to be without a star. Dis-aster.
The incarnation was not a one-time event for Jesus. It is a springboard for entering relationships with us –relationships that are lasting,relationships that are timeless.
The grace of the Incarnation is not just that God’s love became incarnate in Jesus. It’s that some of it has become incarnate in you.
Joy is something more profound and permanent than momentary happiness or temporary pleasure. It is bathed in the muck, mire, and tears of living a story – a shared story.
There is a spark of the divine image in every life. And if that spark is to burn on and burn a little more brightly tomorrow than it does today, it simply has to find some place of welcome in this world, a place where hospitality has been extended even to it. It’s how we were made by the loving source of that spark. All of us.
What healing in ourselves and in our world might result if we, like a son of Timaeus on the roadside one day, walked away from all the false and lesser stories and into the good and blessed cosmos of Jesus?
Can you love this little life of yours even when you can’t control it? Can you believe that you are loved even inside the whirlwind?
So, what if Christians came to be known not as those people who think they know how to fix everybody else in the world but as people who believe that we are changed as our lives are bound together with all kinds of other lives. Maybe even the lives of people who believe that faithfulness can look like hopelessness, that wealth can look like poverty, that the fullest life can look empty.
When the storms and winds bear down on us, the masks are torn off our faces. Our innermost souls are now bare to God and everyone and we become in touch with a greater reality – the reality that a good life is not about reward or punishment. It is instead about living faithfully, step by step in a murky, often unfair world.
“Perhaps the question James is pressing upon us all is, “Will you turn your attention, turn your desires and your fears and your hurts, but also your joy and your hope and your gratitude, will you practice turning ever more of yourself and your life toward the aliveness of God that lives between us? Such turnings, such prayers, such intercessions really do still have the power to heal.”
Jesus was telling the disciples and us that when we take the last place in line, we enter the world of childlike imagination. From that last and lowly position, we have the perfect vantage point to wonder about things, to have the audacity to ask penetrating questions such as – Is this even the right line to be in?
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were the ultimate expression of the truth that God does the work of redemption as a pure and unqualified gift. All that’s left for us to do is try to believe that broken and imperfect lives like ours could be included in that perfect love and then live out of the gratitude that results.
What do we believe in these days? And what do you and I not believe? This is not just a philosophical exercise, and it’s not just for mindless recitation. What we believe and don’t believe will ground us and reshape our lives.
The purpose of the Church, then … the purpose of Calvary in Memphis … is to be the kind of community in which people begin to see themselves as desired by God. A place where we see ourselves as occasions for divine joy.
If Church is somehow still of use to lives like yours and like mine, surely it must be as a place where whatever we’re afraid of doesn’t send us away from each other or set us at odds, but breaks us open to the God-given humanity we all share.
The Jesus who turned over the tables of the money-changers in the temple is the same Jesus who healed and hugged lepers. His anger propels us to challenge injustices in ways that orient all of us toward loving and serving others, especially those we see as hardest to love.
What if David is a man after God’s own heart in that David’s heart, at least on one eventful day, was capable of change?
This is a sermon about learning from women who stood at the edge of before and after and who found God there. This is a sermon about history and about the future, because this is a sermon about the eve of something - who knows what?
Maybe faith, then, is less about believing a fact about God and more about entrusting God and the people around you with the truth about who you are, your joys, and your needs alike.
If we believe, at the bottom of it all, that we are loved unconditionally by God, we can live like we have nothing to lose. We can pray and sing and question and argue like we have nothing to prove.
Perhaps the gospel writer is alluding in the double mention of 12 years that healing does not fully happen in an instant. Healing emerges as multiple layers are unpeeled over time. It happens within and through ongoing relationships.
What if the expansion of our compassion is so important to God that God would rather take the blame for our enemy’s anger than let our anger get the final say in who we believe our enemy to be?
Whether or not you’re a gardener or a farmer, the simple, radical suggestion of this story is that the kingdom is not wholly reliant upon your efforts. In fact, it’s okay if you want to take a nap. I wonder, though, if we can receive this as good news?
Paul sees the mission of Jesus as renewing the unseen foundation of humankind. Christ’s mission teaches us that the pathway to the eternal is not through temporary outward fame or success, but through an inner core of gratitude, humility and service. His mission is to draw us into the ultimate peace that comes from serving a being and a community greater than ourselves.
For all of Eli’s flaws, he is surely a model for any of us called to hold space for anyone else to doubt whatever settled certainty is keeping them from hearing the life God might be calling them to live.
Maybe we could use a reminder that, when we try to talk about God, we are oysters, looking at starfish, trying to imagine a ballerina.
In our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, the strange signs of wind and fire point not to themselves but to the wild power of the Holy Spirit unleashed not to scatter but to gather, unleashed not to destroy but to re-create.
Jesus says that love is what makes space for the truth to emerge. Love and truth are twin pillars, we might even say, that hold things up so the walls we hide behind can finally come down. Only in truthfulness and love will we become one as Jesus and the God he still draws us to are one.
I don’t always know how to do this: how to love this broken place and these broken people and my own broken self. I’m wondering now if staying put is in and of itself an act of love.
What might it look like if all of the sustaining energy in your life and mine were to come directly from the life of Jesus? So much so that if we were to lose contact with his life, we’d wither? Just as crucially, what is the essential, life-giving energy of Jesus?
In reading or singing of the beautiful imagery of Psalm 23, we may be too quick to enter the realm of metaphor and not appreciate the real places being described. Just as young Joe and Charlie were blessed to grow up in and then fall in love with the Old Forest, we are blessed to have real places to go to in our city to lie down in green pastures, and reflect beside still waters.
Sometimes it’s the certainty that no real mystery remains in our lives, the certainty that we’ve already made enough sense of our world, that keeps us from seeing the strange, wonderful, grace-filled future that’s unfolding before us. And maybe this is why the grace of the resurrection makes its way all the way to us through stories like these.
Jesus wants us to live, not only like we are loved with a love even crucifixion can’t kill, but to live like starry-eyed lovers of this world ourselves, so that all that is best and most beautiful within it can come forth into the space that only love can make.
God promises to sprinkle clean water upon the people, and cleanse them from the idols they had served. As water rushes over a rock, it not only cleanses it, it smooths out its rough, jagged edges over time. The currents of the water slowly open up tiny crevices in the rock for new life to find safe spaces in which to be born.
We are now the ones sitting in the aftermath when nothing will happen for a little while. And we begin to tell the story all over again. This is the work of Good Friday, to be in the scraped-out, empty place and to stay there for a while, for as long as we can stand it.
Perhaps last suppers and hard times are when we especially need to love as though we’re simply obeying a clear and doable command. Perhaps these are the times when we just do the next loving thing we can think of, speak the kind word, wrap a towel around us and serve someone, even when we don’t feel very loving quite yet.
Whether today’s trail is a shortcut through the week or not, the scraps of fabric are blazes, trail markers, pieces of cloth snagged and caught like evidence left behind, signaling that the story went along this path, marking the twists and turns from joy to a supper to a garden, passing through a midnight courtyard to a hill named for a skull to a tomb.
The Rev. Sam Teitel is a minister, poet and storyteller with an irreverent wit and a deep, abiding love of scripture, especially the weird parts of scripture that people don't usually like to talk about. His sermons are candid, accessible, and often funnier than he means them to be. A lifelong Unitarian Universalist, he won the grand prize at the 2018 Preachers Fight Club storytelling event. Teitel has served as the minister of The Church Of The River in Memphis since 2017. Before he became a minister, he toured and performed as a slam poet. He is beyond thrilled to be returning to Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series!
The Rev. Sarah Condon is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She makes a home there with her husband Josh (also a priest) and their two children. Condon is the co-host of the Mockingcast and a speaker/writer for Mockingbird Ministries. She also writes an advice column called “Dear Gracie” for Mockingbird magazine. Condon lost her parents in December 2020 in a car accident. It changed everything about her. Her ambitious nature fell apart, and she found something gentler in its place. Frequently she is thinking and writing about forgiveness and the unexpectedness of God’s grace in a world that demands brutality.
The Rev. Sarah Condon is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She makes a home there with her husband Josh (also a priest) and their two children. Condon is the co-host of the Mockingcast and a speaker/writer for Mockingbird Ministries. She also writes an advice column called “Dear Gracie” for Mockingbird magazine. Condon lost her parents in December 2020 in a car accident. It changed everything about her. Her ambitious nature fell apart, and she found something gentler in its place. Frequently she is thinking and writing about forgiveness and the unexpectedness of God’s grace in a world that demands brutality.
The Rev. George Robertson began serving as senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church in September 2017. He served as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and as lecturer/adjunct professor at Covenant Theological Seminary. Currently, Robertson is a professor and academic dean of Memphis City Seminary, part of the executive team for the Memphis Christian Pastor’s Network, and a board member for The Gospel Coalition. He has authored Soul Anatomy, What is Evangelism, Am I Called? (Basics of the Faith Series), and several bible studies. Robertson is passionate about preaching the gospel of grace found in God’s word and working with others to promote the peace and welfare of the Memphis community.
Danielle Chapman is a poet, essayist, and lecturer in English at Yale University. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Poetry International and elsewhere. Delinquent Palaces, released by Northwestern University Press in April 2015, is her debut collection of poems.
Tom Shadyac is one of Hollywood’s all-time leading writer/directors with his films, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar, Liar, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty, grossing nearly 2 billion dollars at the box office. Tom also produced the documentary Happy, and wrote and directed the documentary, I AM, which explores two fundamental questions – What’s wrong with our world, and what can we do about it? I AM has won numerous national and international awards and was one of the highest grossing documentaries of 2011. Tom is also a New York Time’s best-selling author, with the 2012 publication of his first book, Life’s Operating Manual. Of Lebanese descent, Tom comes from a unique and diverse background; he’s been an actor, screenwriter, and standup comic, while studying in depth the monastic traditions, ancient philosophy, mystic poetry, myth, and storytelling. What sets Tom apart is his rare ability to blend humor and heart. In 2013, after teaching at Pepperdine for 8 years, Tom became filmmaker in residence at the University of Memphis and taught at LeMoyne-Owen college where his students introduced him to the pulsing promise of the Soulsville neighborhood. Soon after he purchased two bankrupt buildings that became the Memphis Rox Campus, housing the world’s largest non-profit climbing gym, as well as numerous multi-faceted programs that serve the local community.
Elizabeth L. Jemison is a professor, writer, and teacher who loves questions of how we encounter the past and why it matters for our present. She teaches American religious history as an associate professor of religion at Clemson University. Beyond academic settings, Jemison regularly speaks to congregations and community groups about how religion and history shape our worlds and why studying them can deepen our faith. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press) and has published in Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among other venues. Jemison is a proud native Memphian, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her spouse and young children, who daily invite her to deepen her sense of wonder.
Elizabeth L. Jemison is a professor, writer, and teacher who loves questions of how we encounter the past and why it matters for our present. She teaches American religious history as an associate professor of religion at Clemson University. Beyond academic settings, Jemison regularly speaks to congregations and community groups about how religion and history shape our worlds and why studying them can deepen our faith. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press) and has published in Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among other venues. Jemison is a proud native Memphian, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her spouse and young children, who daily invite her to deepen her sense of wonder.
Anwar Arafat is an Imam for the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis. In Memphis since 2014, he moved here from Salt Lake City, UT, where he was born and raised, and served as an imam for several years. Arafat has traveled and lived overseas, completing his religious education locally and abroad, earning a bachelor’s degree in Islamic Studies, and most recently finishing a master’s degree in Islamic Leadership at the Islamic Seminary of America (TISA) in Dallas, Texas. He’s the U.S. Outreach Specialist for iERA, an international Dawah organization.
Instead of belief being a passive, intellectual affirmation that Jesus exists and is even the son of God, belief becomes an action, a commitment, a way of life. It becomes giving one’s whole heart – one’s whole being – to Jesus. Quite honestly, it becomes a lot harder.
The Rev. Dr. Peggy Jean Craig is a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, community development nerd, wannabe poet, and personal photographer for her two-year-old identical twin girls. Growing up in rural Alabama as the only Asian kid other than her brother shaped her curiosity about marginalized places, community, and belonging. She’s most at home in borderland spaces, whether that be leading an arts and literacy youth organization in North Philadelphia, participating in university civic engagement in Camden, New Jersey, or pastoring a Germantown church dedicated to serving their immigrant and Latinx neighbors. With the help of her church, she’s practicing deep loving with folks in the midst of violence, homelessness, and hunger.
Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the author of the NYT bestseller This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body. Her spirituality in this season is comprised of more questions than answers and grounded in myth, storytelling, interior examen, and embodiment. She is currently interested in questions concerning collective and inherited memory and has been formed by thinkers such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Octavia Butler, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis uses her gifts as an author, activist, preacher, and public theologian to create an antiracist, just, gun violence-free, fully welcoming, gender-affirming society in which everyone has enough. Lewis has preached in pulpits and on stages in the U.S., South Africa, and France. She’s been serving as senior minister and public theologian at Middle Church for 20 years. The author of several books and articles, Lewis’s most recent book, Fierce Love, was published in 2021. Her Just Love Story Bible will be released in 2025. Lewis produces an annual justice conference with Middle Church—Freedom Rising: You. Move. The World is scheduled for April 2024.
The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis uses her gifts as an author, activist, preacher, and public theologian to create an antiracist, just, gun violence-free, fully welcoming, gender-affirming society in which everyone has enough. The author of several books and articles, Lewis’s most recent book, Fierce Love, was published in 2021. Her Just Love Story Bible will be released in 2025.Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the author of the NYT bestseller This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body.
What if, maybe starting with those 10 Commandments, we saw the rules we live by not so much as boundaries and walls to protect us, but as windows into the world? As ways of structuring awareness. Openings through which we look at more and more of the life we’ve been given together on this earth and ask what love would require of us in all of it.
Joe Birch marks forty-six years of service to viewers of WMC-TV in 2024. His journey in journalism has opened pathways of community service. For example, Birch organizes the Mobile Food Pantries that provide a week’s worth of groceries to five hundred families monthly through the generosity of St. Patrick Community Outreach, Inc., and Memphis Rotary Club. He worships at St. Patrick Catholic Church and has an active and robust prayer life.
After reading Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be in his final year of college, Mark Muesse gave up his ambition to be a physician and decided to become a philosopher. His parents were not pleased. He began traveling the world to study its significant spiritual pathways and spent thirty years at Rhodes College sharing what he learned. Along with Tillich, his way has been illuminated by figures like Meister Eckhart, William James, Ibn ʿArabī, Confucius, and Willie Nelson. Now retired from academics, he tries to live a quiet life of reflection, still pondering the mysteries that prompted his turn to philosophy.
Rabbi Micah Greenstein is senior rabbi of Temple Israel, Memphis’ historic 170-year-old synagogue and the last remaining large congregation in a four-state region. His leadership roles include the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, the National Civil Rights Museum, and creating a network of the next generation of women leaders in Cambodia and Southeast Asia through the Harpswell Foundation. With antisemitism and demonstrations of Jew-hatred becoming commonplace and met mainly by silence, Greenstein is passionate about building bridges across faith communities. He cares deeply about the future of Jewish life in North America and the dramatic action necessary to preserve, build, and grow vibrant, diverse Jewish communities.
Dialogue: The Lenten Preaching Series Podcast with The Mystic by Calvary Episcopal Church
Jesus enters the scene and starts talking about losing everything, and I hear him saying ‘quite openly’ that a broken world needs a story about breaking.
Dr. Scott Morris describes himself as “a one-note guy” who focuses on the link between faith and health. He believes that to follow Jesus, Christians must have a healing ministry. The people, patients, staff, and volunteers he has worked with since founding Church Health in 1987 inspire Morris to explore the scope of God’s imagination and encourage him in his journey of love and following Jesus. Morris holds that if we care for our bodies as well as our spirits, we will become closer to God.
We are disappointed to announce that an unexpected health issue kept Barbara Brown Taylor from traveling to Memphis for Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. Barbara wrote a sermon to be delivered in her absence titled “Blessed are the Spiritually Bankrupt.”The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then, she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Like Jesus, you will walk into some days certain on some level that you’re as worthy of love and dignity as any other human being, and then, a moment later, become deeply unsure of this truth and look elsewhere for your identity.
Dr. Catherine Meeks is a storyteller with a purpose. Born in 1946 in segregated Arkansas, Meeks has spent a lifetime working on issues of racial healing and the promotion of life. The daughter of a sharecropper and a teacher, she grew up hearing her father talk about a 12-year-old brother who died from a burst appendix before she was born—refused service at a white hospital. “I grew up in that kind of atmosphere of The world is really hostile toward us because we’re black and poor.” For over 30 years, Meeks has advocated wellness and social justice, giving voice to those living on the margins of society and promoting a healthy racial dialogue worldwide. Meeks has a master’s degree in social work from Clark Atlanta University and a Ph.D. from Emory University focusing on Jungian Psychology and African American Women’s Literature.
The Rev. John Pitzer is a native of Texas and currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he serves at Trinity Episcopal Church as associate rector of outreach/mission and pastoral care. For twenty years, Pitzer was a friar with the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans. He served at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Memphis which has been a neighbor to Calvary for over a century. Pitzer believes that preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ--an all-inclusive Good News that is intended for everyone no matter our circumstances in life--is needed in this world like never before.
Once we are reconciled to God, we become part of God’s ministry of reconciliation. The best way we can continually fill the hole in the heart of God and the holes in our own hearts is to reconcile with one another. Not just when it’s easy, but most especially when it’s hard, even when it seems impossible.
Maybe love is the source of all true and enduring forms of justice because love cares so deeply for what is good in its beloved that it can’t look away when that goodness is denied or destroyed.
Jesus removed whatever demon this unclean spirit was. He did so through the authority of his speech, his language. But he removed a perhaps larger demon at the same time. He removed the stigma this man felt. It was as if Jesus erased the scarlet U for the unclean spirit this man felt on his forehead.
God’s desire for Nineveh was not that people settle up some debt for their sins. It was only that they turn from their destructive ways of being in the world and come more fully alive.
Maybe Christ is inviting you and me to let our uncertainty not be a shield but to have enough humility and hope to come and see that the world is filled with the glory of God.
Don’t you think that turning our loneliness into the abundant life we were created for might be why Jesus risked stepping into that line of complicated humans at the Jordan River to strike up a friendship that has now extended even to us?
I wonder if grace could be better described as the warm waters of birth that nurture us in the womb, that bathe us in unconditional love, and then launch us into new light and life, no matter what our age.
You and I and every child who’s ever been filled with anticipation for what delight might await them in the morning have known a form of unconditional love. Jesus would just expand radically what and whom in this world we might come to love in just that unabashed way, as we come to trust that God loved each one of us in just that unabashed way first.
There was a teller sent from God, whose name was John, whose name was Gwendolyn, whose name has been forgotten, whose name is known only to us. They came as tellers to tell about the light, about the love, about the times like this, so that all might believe that love is true and triumphs; and God’s actual, so that all might believe that among us we’ll find God already and always.
Psalm 100 invites us into a spirit of intimacy. It reminds us that we are made by God, we belong to God, and we are the sheep of God’s pasture. We are entrusted to the intimate, loving care of our shepherd – a shepherd willing to leave the 99 to come find and care for any one of us who is lost. Ultimately, the Psalm reminds us that God is good.
When we begin with the conviction that God is the one who calls to us in the garden, or the good shepherd who takes off after us when we stray, and if we believe the kingdom of God is a realm of gift and grace, not scarcity and fear, we might pause before assigning every characteristic of the master in the parable to God. And in that pause we may notice that fear of the master is what caused the man to bury his talent in the ground. Fear is the problem here, not the point.
What this passage is really about is hope – the hope of the unity of the living with the dead in Christ. The image of being caught up in the clouds with Jesus, reunited with those we love can be a beautiful one, whether it’s real or metaphorical. It invites us to wonder: are there ways we can be caught up in the clouds while still here on earth?
If we truly let our hearts and minds absorb how Jesus says blessedness can actually manifest in a life, well maybe we’d be present enough to our neighbor to help lift her poor spirit and satisfy her hunger and thirst in deeper ways than the ones that just reinforce our own virtuousness. Maybe we’d also receive the next unfolding moment of our lives for the unmerited gift that it is.
Love is the simple and even obvious answer, but we also know it’s not the easy answer. That’s why we keep looking around at the burning world and wondering, what are we really supposed to do about all this?
I think Jesus still calls us to drop the illusion that the things that matter most in this life are scarce and that our true worth is not a gift and a given but something that each of us must earn for ourselves. These are the illusions the empire of money depends on. Jesus calls us away from that realm because it’s a realm that’s just too small for the abundant life the human heart was created for.
In feeling their shared pain and struggle, Euodia and Syntyche are invited to feel a gentleness toward one another. When we feel a gentle spirit toward someone else, especially someone from whom we’ve been estranged, we give space for two vulnerable hearts to beat in rhythm with each other. These are the moments when Jesus is most near to us. These are the moments that lead to joy.
The question Jesus keeps pressing upon me and upon all of us is What does it look like for us, here and now, to set aside our confident, violent visions of what we think would set things straight and ask what love requires? Ask perhaps what these strangers to us might actually need in their lives to make them a little more whole.
Because even an easy question like “Which child did the will of his father” leads to another more difficult question: which child are you? Which child am I? Our willingness to let these ancient stories nudge at us, poke at us, and even interrogate us is what faithful engagement is all about.
The wisdom of God calls to us still, saying our economies don’t have to be built on the stingy ideas of our small minds.
“But here’s the question the parable poses to us. What do you need to forget? And what do you need to remember? Do you ever find yourself remembering and ruminating on some hurt you know you need to be set free from somehow and forgetting the many gifts and graces that have arrived in your life since the first breath you drew this morning? I sure do.”
One of the questions that kept coming to me during the sabbatical was: ‘Saved for what?’ That’s still an open question for me, and perhaps it is for all of us. But that ride with Cloudy and Hadrian and my coffee with Phil propelled me closer to an answer, or at least gave me a new beginning toward slowing down and taking the time just to live that question.
If we let ourselves be drawn toward the mystery of the God who has no adequate name, we might also let ourselves be drawn toward the mystery of each other. Because your name is inadequate to who you are in the depths of yourself as well, as is the name of the person you think you know best in this world and the name of your oldest and archest enemy.
What’s saving your life right now? Perhaps some of the very same things that saved Moses and his generation: an apprehension of God, the invisible kindness of others, the strength of character your mother taught you.
In the end, faith looks like a kind of clear attention. A truthful way of seeing the world as it is or the person in front of us for who they are really can change everything, beginning with ourselves.
It’s scary in the boat and outside the boat. It’s unnerving just skirting the coastline sometimes. And it’s wild with foam and glitter. As we make our way through this known and strange world, buffeting winds will come at us sideways and catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
“If we, like the people on the mountain that day, make a space where our beautiful, flawed, complicated history can actually be what asks us not to rush to act until we have listened to Jesus with curiosity and wonder, transfigurations are still possible.”
It’s fun to play with the idea of Jesus as an undercover astrophysicist, hinting two millennia ago at the broad reaches of God’s imagination.
God blesses Jacob because God is love, not fear. And love — perfect, unconditional, redeeming love — is the most powerful form of encouragement of them all.
Our life is indeed a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, so don’t bother trying to make sense of it. If you find a penny, pick it up. If you have some love, give it. And leave the end of your story in God’s good hands.
There’s a road sign that says, rest here. Take this exit ramp and leave the grind and churn, the struggle to keep up, to push ever onwards. Lean up against a burden stone to feel the release of your burden.
We keep reading the Bible to witness encounters that hit us hard, remind us we don’t know everything, and also tell us again and again that even when we feel banished, far from human presence, we are never alone.
I truly believe coming to know our true selves, our given and forgiven selves, not the ones we’ve struggled to construct and earn and prove, is the newness of life Paul wants us to walk in.
Mercy is always a gift, and it is always about the restoration of community, whether that’s a community of two or twenty or ten million.
There is a kinship at the very heart of the world, at the very beginning of the story, yoking us together for better or for worse.
Instead of grasping vertically toward the heavens, the people reach out horizontally by listening and talking to each other. Much like a jazz group, they play off each other. They build note by note, riff by riff, toward the ultimate reunion of all humanity with one another and with God.
When Jesus found fearful people huddled in locked upper rooms or on hillsides staring at the sky, he sent them right back down into the city. Right back into the liturgy of life in this world that he so loves. The incarnate liturgy in which his holy and life-giving Spirit is still to be found.
Jesus concludes his promises and reassurances by telling them that he will love them and will reveal himself to them. The love that he gives is not temporary, nor is it transactional.
Learning to let go and trust God with the details of the future can be a way of opening our eyes and our trust to the presence of God in the moment at hand. It truly can be a way, a truth, and a life for us right now. And this way is not just any way. It is the way of Jesus. The way of love. Maybe trust is just the space we need to meet this world with the kind of love Jesus taught and lived to the end.
“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.” When was the last time awe came upon you?
Baptism is the shaper of our identity as beloved children of God. God shapes us in a form that can be reshaped over time to meet the opportunities and challenges we encounter at different stages of our journey. God is constantly reshaping us, much like the ways Linus reshapes his blanket.
High school seniors Bruce Marshall, Jack Jordan, Dahlia Townley-Bakewell, and Sam Shiberou offer today’s sermon.
Christ is risen, my friends! Christ is risen! The only work that’s left for us to do is walk away from the stories of the empire, and commit together to being the people of Abel’s God, the community of Jesus, and to giving our fears over to his resurrection to be raised as joy.
We imagine the edge or the end guarded by dragons, but those are angels telling us to look around and see that this is not the end, and so this is not where we have to stay. In some ways, this invitation is just as fearsome as a mythical sea monster, it requires some boldness and at least a little bit of faith to say yes when the world says no.
Good Friday is a day of revolution. It is a revolution in which Jesus dies at the hands of oppression, then rises to new life to bring heaven to earth, not only in an afterlife but in the here and now. And Jesus invites us to join him as full, active participants in his saving work of bringing peace, justice, and hope.
Perhaps a challenge at the heart of the Maundy Thursday story to all of us is whether we might be humbler about the sources of evil and clearer about the commandment to love in all our relationships and dealings in this world.
Any week in the news could be Holy Week. Any week in the news we are just as likely to see the dastardly worst of ourselves on display in the larger machinations of our politics and in the crush of public and private cruelties. We must learn to look directly at these things, not to look away, and to find even there in the hurt and meanness, God present in the scrum.
The Rev. Sam Teitel is a Unitarian Universalist minister, poet, and lapsed punk rocker. He serves as the minister of The Church of the River in Memphis, Tennessee. His favorite parts of scripture are the parts that people usually try to ignore. He loves checking out new restaurants and record stores in Memphis with his wife, Sandra, their son, Gideon, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Tommy.
Dr. Jemar Tisby is a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church's Complicity in Racism and How to Fight Racism. Tisby has co-hosted the podcast "Pass the Mic” for all of its seven-year history, and his writing has been featured in multiple national news outlets. Dr. Tisby speaks nationwide on the topics of racial justice, U.S. history, and Christianity. He earned his Ph.D. in history, where his research examines race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century.
Kaitlin Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation who was raised in the Christian faith, Kaitlin investigates the intersections of spirituality and identity. She believes truthfully sharing the stories and contradictions of our histories and faith traditions can contribute to communal healing. As an inter-spiritual advocate, Kaitlin participates in conversations on topics such as colonialism in faith communities. Her forthcoming book, Living Resistance, claims that “resistance is for every human who desires their neighbors’ flourishing.”
As we more and more see the world around us through the eyes of Jesus, we too are often moved to weep. Our tears are not only signs of our humanity, but are signs of our participation in Jesus’ divinity. The tears we shed join his tears in becoming the seeds of new life.
Dr. Nichols, a native of Memphis, TN, is the organizing pastor of Freedom’s Chapel Christian Church (DOC). Following the death of a childhood friend, Dr. Nichols created A More Excellent Way, Inc., an organization with a mission to help individuals from all walks of life to enter into, engage in, and maintain spiritually healthy relationships while eliminating relationship violence. She is a founding member of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope) and serves as Inter-Faith Officer for MIFA (Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association). She has been a visiting professor in Gweru, Zimbabwe, a church planter throughout China, and a Holy Land pilgrim. Dr. Nichols’s deepest passions are transformational teaching and working with others to seek justice, love, and mercy.
Rabbi David Wolpe is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Known for his honest engagement on the place of religion in public life, Rabbi Wolpe explores Torah in fresh and faithful ways. Author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times, Wolpe has been named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek and twice named among the 50 most influential Angelinos by LA Magazine. He has taught at a number of universities, including UCLA, Hunter college, Pepperdine and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and written for numerous prominent news outlets. His next adventure will be serving as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
The Rev. Canon Borg was not raised in the church and lived outside the US (and a conventional Christian culture) until she was eight. At age 26 she had a compelling experience reading the Gospels. That interaction began an unsettling and transformational journey into Christianity and its traditions. At age 40 Borg was ordained in the Episcopal church, which has remained her spiritual home for 32 years. Her commitment to her faith requires continual rethinking and reimagining what Christianity is and why it matters. She is very concerned about the future of Christianity, particularly American Christianity. Borg’s adult formation has been profoundly shaped by the life and work of her late husband (the scholar Dr. Marcus J. Borg), the South African Bush, the horse, and the work of John D. Caputo. She hosts a monthly virtual gathering called the Second Saturday Conversation that explores Christianity in and for the 21st century.
Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, an intervention program that builds job, life, and relational skills with former gang members. Known for his bestselling book Tattoos on the Heart, Boyle tells stories of shared life that provoke laughter as often as tears. Homeboy Industries has spawned more than 250 partnerships with social enterprises around the globe. Father Boyle travels widely and speaks on the importance of meeting violence with humanity.
Could we learn to look at the stranger, the sinner, the heretic, the outsider we’ve been conditioned to ignore or worse … could we learn to pay attention to the likes of these just as Jesus and this woman paid attention to each other in spite of everything? I think we can.
Dalia Mogahed is the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, where she leads the organization’s pioneering research and thought leadership programs on American Muslims. With John L. Esposito, she co-authored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. President Barack Obama appointed Mogahed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2009 and she was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about U.S. engagement with Muslim communities. Her 2016 TED talk was named one of the top TED talks of that year. Mogahed is a frequent expert commentator in global media outlets and international forums. She is also the CEO of Mogahed Consulting.
A national leader in the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Winnie Varghese is known for her inspired writing, teaching, and preaching. Winnie has been a leading voice on issues including mass incarceration; systemic racism; gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ issues; and immigration, among others. She is the 23rd rector of St. Luke's, Atlanta. Prior to St. Luke’s, Winnie served at Trinity Church Wall Street, St. Mark’s in the Bowery in New York City, and St. Alban’s, Los Angeles. Winnie has also served as the Episcopal Chaplain at both Columbia University and the University of California Los Angeles.
In addition to the noontime experience, Calvary offers Dialogue: The Lenten Preaching Series Podcast, recorded live at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, each Wednesday evening. This week's guests include Dr. Brian McLaren, Christian author and activist, and faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, from San Marcos, FL; the Rev. Winnie Varghese, rector at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, GA; and the Rev. Scott Walters, rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, TN.
Dr. Brian D. McLaren started his career as a college English teacher, then became a pastor, and then put the two together to become a spiritual writer. He loves the outdoors (fly fishing especially), music (jazz and folk especially), and reading (novels and poetry especially). He has four adult kids and five amazing grandchildren and will show you photos without your permission. His new book, Do I Stay Christian? (St. Martins, 2022) is on Publisher's Weekly's top 20 books of 2022. He and his wife, Grace, just survived Hurricane Ian and can be found walking the beach, pruning trees in their little mango orchard, and watching tortoises cross the road. He looks forward to returning to Calvary and telling the honest truth (as he sees it) about the future of faith.
The senior rabbi at Temple Israel, Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. "Torah" in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God's unity. What inspires Greenstein most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000 year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God's partner in healing a broken world. A preacher at the Lenten Preaching Series since 2000, Rabbi Greenstein is an integral part of Calvary’s Lenten services.
Dr. Omid Safi is a teacher in the Islamic tradition of Radical Love with extensive written work on the foundational sources of Islam and Sufism. A leading Muslim public intellectual, Safi investigates the intersection of spirituality and social justice. He is also deeply committed to liberationist prophetic traditions manifested in the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Malcolm X. Dr. Safi has delivered the keynote address in annual services honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
The Reverend Jen Bailey is an ordained minister, author, and a national leader in the multi-faith movement for justice. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Faith Matters Network. The Rev. Bailey believes love is the animating force that will make the difference between a future of uncertainty and division and one of deep belonging. She is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In addition to the noontime experience, Calvary offers Dialogue: The Lenten Preaching Series Podcast, recorded live at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, each Wednesday evening in Lent.This week's guests are the Rev. Jennifer Bailey, ordained A.M.E. minister and national leader in the multi-faith movement for justice, from Nashville, TN; Dr. Omid Safi, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University in Durham, NC; and Rabbi Micah Greenstein,senior rabbi at Temple Israel in Memphis, TN.
The temptation is to believe that God is revealed only in the delight and not also in the grief or that God lives in the places of hope or music and not also in the places of anxiety and hurt. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.
The Rev. Becca Stevens is a speaker, social entrepreneur, author, priest, founder of ten non-profit justice enterprises, and President of Thistle Farms. She has been featured on multiple news outlets and named a White House Champion of Change. Stevens has raised over $65M in funding for justice initiatives. She leads important conversations across the country where she underscores her central message that love is the strongest force for change in the world.
I also believe to my core that, for all the horrific bugs in our operating system over the centuries, the Church still bears something sacred and relevant and as desperately needed as ever to this lonely, hurting world of ours. We don’t have to be a perfect community. Just one that’s humbly faithful to the way of Jesus in our relationships with friend, sinner, and stranger alike. And when we are, our life together here at Calvary can still be a source of miraculous cures.
Paul invited the Corinthians to reorient themselves – to look upward and outward toward God. He invited them to join together in seeking out the place where the wounded heart of humanity meets the divine presence of God.
“Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things… Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,/ you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”
Is there a moment — a conversation, an experience, an encounter — that changed the way you saw something forever?
Andrew found a teacher - a teacher who was willing to stay with his students as long as it took to impart and share some wisdom, even if it took forever.
God in Jesus rescues you and me the way search parties go out into the woods or out to sea to find the wayward, lost, or drowning soul who thought she could handle the hike or the currents on her own but got horribly turned around and is dangerously adrift.
This is the message from the dream, from the angel of the Lord: that in a treacherous world, we do better to stay together, reaching out and taking someone’s hand for the journey ahead.
The Rt. Rev. Phoeve Roaf discusses John's question "Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?"
To turn completely around and to see oneself as nothing but a stone raised up by God, to see God’s favor not as a birthright but as a gift, one that can transform us and transform our world … to see ourselves like that is to have our lives lit up by grace. And it is to see the grace that is present in and extended by a loving God to every last soul we meet, whether they’ve come to know it, or believe it, or trust it or not.
What can we do to stop the violence around us? What we can do is cultivate hearts of gentleness, tenderness, and compassion toward those around us, toward our world, and toward ourselves. We can awaken and orient our minds toward the coming Jesus, who seeks to turn us away from actions, economic choices, words, and thoughts that are destructive, hurtful, and violent. He comes to convert every ounce of our beings into instruments of peace, tools for cultivating peace gardens that germinate in our hearts and minds, and then spread life-giving seeds to our city, nation, and world.
We notice, and we wonder, and we watch for patterns, remembering that our finite minds will always bump up against infinity. This unnerves and comforts, maybe in equal measure.
Both prophets urged people to pay attention to the place where they stood and the moment that was unfolding because if God is with us at all in any meaningful way, it is not as some abstract principle or distant force, but in the life we are actually living. In crumbling temples and audacious building projects. In lush vineyards and lousy crop returns, in typhoons and childbirth, in love, and war, and peace. That—whichever ‘that’ happens to be yours right now—is where God is. And that—whichever ‘that’ happens to be yours—is the moment on which God needs you to train your attention.
In the Beatitudes Jesus hands down to us, we identify with the poor and with those who have experienced or are experiencing loss and grief. When we are reviled and hurt, we even somehow find blessing within that, and we persevere, with God’s help. We keep going. We keep encouraging. We keep loving.
One day in Jericho, the salvation of the whole cosmos came to the house of a tax collector named Zacchaeus. I ask you, friends, what might it look like if the salvation of the whole cosmos came to your house or my house today?
God’s mercy doesn’t get portioned out in teaspoons, and it doesn’t pick and choose its beneficiaries against a careful checklist of deserving qualities. Everyone in the temple is doing the best they can; frankly, everyone outside the temple is too. They (and we) all go down to their homes in grace.
Faith is having our lives be fired and ordered by a vision of Shalom Shabbat, Sabbath Peace. Where hospitality is the law, because human dignity is a given.
Jesus is telling the Samaritan that just as his profound gratitude is a verb, the faith at the man’s core is also a verb, and the fruits of that faith - wellness, wholeness, and salvation - are verbs as well. None of them are one-time events, but processes to be lived out and shared in the lives of others. The most important part of what Jesus said to him was, “Get up and go.”
"We are worthless slaves. We have done only what we ought to have done.” You won’t find that mantra in any self help manual. But if the church can be a community of honest humility and thankfulness to God about how we got wherever we are, and a community that nurtures the hope even a tiny seed of faith can create, lives will be changed.
I struggle with the idea that the chasm is permanently fixed in the unknowable next chapters, but I know for a fact that the chasms are not fixed here. Whether or not it was too late for the rich man after his death, this story tells us that it’s not too late for the five living brothers and that it’s not impossible for us.
There is a longing for home in every human heart that ever was. We need to come to terms with the truth that this longing won’t go away. And, friends, this isn’t just a matter of self help for our individual souls. The longing for home that’s been shaped by a hopeless, violent, unjust world, will keep looking for a place where it will be accepted and affirmed, no matter how distorted and destructive the terms of acceptance in that false home may be.
To be lost is to be not in control, to be disoriented, to be vulnerable. Even in our spiritual journeys, we often use the language of the hero’s quest. In our prayers and practices, we set out to find meaning, find wholeness, find God. And there are times when it is helpful and useful for us to be in the mode of seekers and searchers. Yet, in the irony of ironies, it’s when we let go of grasping for the hero’s quest and admit our doubts, our fears, our sins, our angers, our hurts, our heartaches – that’s when we’re found by God.
Our Christian faith says we need the way of love only more, the more our world breaks apart. Because we do know that we sure can’t survive times like these unloved and alone. It’s been said that grief is love with nowhere to go. Which is to say first that grief is a form of love. And maybe also that to have even one person with you in your grief and fear is to give that love at least this one place to go.
Christ is beginning and ending worlds, and we are too with small choices that actually are not so trivial. This story is not light fodder about social p’s and q’s, this is the kingdom itself. It is about love and its difficulties, and it is about our lives in this very world.
Embedded in the Sabbath is an emptiness, a stoppage, a non activity. And the religious leaders protested because they’d forgotten what the Sabbath was for. It’s a day empty of productivity so that we remember that we live by the grace and gift of God, not by what we’ve done ourselves.
The people longed for God to once again tend the vine. Perhaps they and we are also learning that we have a sacred responsibility to do everything we can to help God tend the vine.
It’s been said that the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s certainty. The author of Hebrews would certainly agree. So, can you hear the good news that the uncertainty and blindness we live with are not failures of your faith, but the only context in which the faith Jesus said was such a powerful force for healing can take root? They may also make the space that love and risk and joy and friendship and all sorts of beautiful things need to breathe and come to be.
In many ways, this scripture passage is less about finances, and more about coming to terms with our mortality. We are going to die. And we can’t take it, whatever it is, with us. The parable of the rich fool invites us to see that we have a finite opportunity to build and leave a legacy that is truly lasting in the economy of God and our neighbors.
When we stop asking how to get God to give us what we want when we pray and begin to wonder what Jesus wants to come alive in us through the practice of prayer I think we start seeing what Jesus was talking about in lives all around us, even as this broken down world seems to be breaking down only further by the day.
We are all invited to look up from our tasks, whatever the work that we are about might be, and see what we are part of – what we are creating through all of our efforts. The invitation to pause does not come because we are in the wrong for tending to necessary tasks, but to help us see that the tasks are in service of a more beautiful life for ourselves and for those in our company.
And Jesus says, I know. I know the size of your heart, and of your soul, and of your strength, and of your mind. I know you can’t do it all, but here’s the thing. You can do something. You can help this guy right in front of you, even if he’s not your kind or your kin. You can learn through the actions of others, even “other” others, how to show mercy and to change, if not the world, then the world of the person right in front of you.
In fact, the reign of God may spring a little more into view every time one person looks over at another one, not wondering what she has to offer or how he might be of use, but looks at them as the miracle they are just by existing in this glorious, hurting, strange, beautiful, bountiful harvest of a world that Jesus wants us to see for the miracle it is.
When Jesus described the reign of God, it wasn’t as some fixed inheritance to be preserved and passed on intact. It was like a few mustard seeds exploding into a bush full of birds or a little yeast blowing up a loaf of bread like a balloon. He told his followers that they and we would do even greater things than he did after he was gone. He said he was leaving, not Christian operating instructions or even a fixed set of holy scriptures, but a Holy Spirit who would work within and among us a lead us into all sorts of new life and possibilities.
What we might learn from these stories is how not to get the answer wrong. That means not answering from a place of fear, from the shadows of death and despair. That means not offering mistaken beliefs or lies we’ve come to believe but answering these simple questions with simple truths.
Believing that wisdom is intrinsic, that it has always been and will always be, that it is present in everything and every place, means that we can be “guided into all truth” by all that we encounter - from the simple meal of bread and wine here at this table to the banquet of experiences every day of our lives.
What is so astonishing about Pentecost is that it is not a once-upon-a-time story. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing, never-ending account of God’s refusal to give up on us. The Spirit which hovered over the deep way back in Genesis, the Spirit that overshadowed Mary to bring God into the world, the Spirit who descended on Jesus in the Jordan River, the Spirit who midwifed a book of prayers into being, that Spirit has been given to us. Baptism is the sign that this is so.
Paul had come to Philippi because he had seen a vision of a Greek man saying, ‘Come and help us.’ Instead of finding that man, he was led to this enterprising businesswoman who wound up helping him!
You may need to pray your way into the story differently. But since the theme is so pervasive in the Bible, from the first pages to the last, I do believe each one of us would do well to enter this story with at least some part of ourselves we can’t imagine anyone would ever welcome or pay loving attention to, especially God.
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something.” If this is true, and I think it might be, one of the ways that Jesus calls to us from the grief and brokenness of our lives is with this invitation to learn, to become a disciple, again and again, to learn and to unlearn and to relearn. When we are each feeling lost and ready to surrender, we are encouraged to discover more about the world, more about ourselves, more about the ways of God.
Sometimes evidence that we are loved shows up in the simplest of attention paid to the most ordinary of things, doesn’t it? Somebody loves us all. And he wants us to pass that love along, in this world of ordinary things, even on the resurrection side of Easter. Maybe especially on the resurrection side of Easter.
I feel that the message that usually comes with this gospel is something along the lines of “it’s wrong to doubt God. Take the disciples at their word. Don’t underestimate God.” But I disagree. One of the things I treasure most about the Episcopal church and this environment I’ve grown up in is the way we welcome those doubts. We try to answer the questions we can and sit with those we can’t.
I want Jesus’s resurrection, whatever happened at the tomb that day, to change and heal my life. I want its power to change and repair this broken-down world. I want it to matter to lives like ours and a world like this one. Don’t you?
The ancient Hebrew people saw ram’s horns as similes for that which in humans aspires toward the highest. The horns, while they reach up to the sky, are rooted in the animal. They are signs of joining together heaven and earth. That is what this night is all about.
Yes, it can all come undone. And too easily. With a word, with a kiss, with a missed moment to say the brave thing, with nothing at all we could have done differently. And yet, as all the threads and yarns unravel, as the tapestry comes to shreds, somehow God is still here. Even now.
While the command to love is old, the demands of love will always be as new as the moment at hand and the person in front of you. It may even be that love is not the action, so much as it is the curious attention itself.
This passion Gospel just read in parts reveals a different sort of God – the God who endures betrayal, incarceration, and torture, the God who is moved by and weeps over the plight of humanity. God is the Rock of our salvation, but God is also a Rock who weeps.
Justin J. Pearson is the fourth son of teenage parents who went on to careers in the ministry and education. His life journey has been marked by a restless pursuit of justice ranging from educational equity to access to environmental justice and liberation. He was one of the founders and leaders of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (now Memphis Community Against Pollution, or MCAP), which successfully blocked the Byhalia Connection Pipeline. He is also the special assistant to the CEO at Year Up, an organization that furthers employment equity for young adults. Pearson has an unwavering commitment to social and racial justice for Memphis and for this country. He hopes his life preaches a sermon that will glorify God and honor his ancestors.
Rabbi Micah Greenstein and Rev. Sam Teitel have been buddies since 2017. They share a love of scripture, a belief in social justice motivated by faith, and an aversion to weak coffee. Micah is the senior rabbi at Temple Israel; Sam is the minister at The Church of the River. They are thrilled to be collaborating on this sermon together for LPS and hope to multiply the life of a sermon by the power of two!
Mr. Geoff Calkins Columnist, The Daily MemphianThursday, April 7Geoff Calkins is the sports columnist for The Daily Memphian and hosts The Geoff Calkins Show on 92.9ESPN. He has covered eight Olympics, a dozen Super Bowls, and more Memphis football and basketball games than he could possibly count. But he has always been less focused on the games than on the people who play them, and on the stories those people have to tell. In that way, he takes inspiration from his great uncle, the Rev. Raymond Calkins, who served as the pastor at First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1912 to 1940 — and who preached his last sermon at First Church in 1964, at the age of 95. “I was fond of people,” Rev. Calkins wrote. “Fonder of them than of books or anything else in the world. To be with them, to learn from them, to share with them, this I discovered to be the deepest interest in life." TwitterLinkqq Musician: Michelle Vigneau, Associate Professor of oboe, The University of Memphis Associate Professor of oboe and member of the Memphis Woodwind Quintet, Dr. Vigneau has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Mexico and spent three years playing in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. She joined the faculty of the University of Memphis in 2003.
Mr. Justin Pearson Community activist and co-founder, Memphis Community Against the PipelineFriday, April 8Justin J. Pearson is the fourth son of teenage parents who went on to careers in the ministry and education. His life journey has been marked by a restless pursuit of justice ranging from educational equity to access to environmental justice and liberation. He was one of the founders and leaders of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (now Memphis Community Against Pollution, or MCAP), which successfully blocked the Byhalia Connection Pipeline. He is also the special assistant to the CEO at Year Up, an organization that furthers employment equity for young adults. Pearson has an unwavering commitment to social and racial justice for Memphis and for this country. He hopes his life preaches a sermon that will glorify God and honor his ancestors.
Geoff Calkins is the sports columnist for The Daily Memphian and hosts The Geoff Calkins Show on 92.9ESPN. He has covered eight Olympics, a dozen Super Bowls, and more Memphis football and basketball games than he could possibly count. But he has always been less focused on the games than on the people who play them, and on the stories those people have to tell. In that way, he takes inspiration from his great uncle, the Rev. Raymond Calkins, who served as the pastor at First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1912 to 1940 — and who preached his last sermon at First Church in 1964, at the age of 95. “I was fond of people,” Rev. Calkins wrote. “Fonder of them than of books or anything else in the world. To be with them, to learn from them, to share with them, this I discovered to be the deepest interest in life."
Rabbi Micah Greenstein and Rev. Sam Teitel have been buddies since 2017. They share a love of scripture, a belief in social justice motivated by faith, and an aversion to weak coffee. Micah is the senior rabbi at Temple Israel; Sam is the minister at The Church of the River. They are thrilled to be collaborating on this sermon together for LPS and hope to multiply the life of a sermon by the power of two!
The Rev. Dr. Kathryn (Kat) Kimmel grew up in North Carolina where she learned to love the mountains, county fairs, and livermush (no, you don't want to know what's in it!)—and it was there she was formed and loved into faith. She has served in chaplain and pastor roles during her years of ministry. Kimmel and her husband, Tom, moved to Memphis in 2021 when she was called as senior pastor at First Baptist Church. For Kimmel, ministry is about showing up and being present: listening, building trust, and journeying through this life together.
The Rev. Dan Matthews is a consistent favorite at Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. His preaching is inspired by powerful and meaningful stories like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In light of these stories, Matthews pushes us to recognize when genuine blessings come our way. He believes that these moments of being “kissed by God” are more than being in the right place at the right time. His spiritual discipline of holy love is modeled after his mother’s ability to love with abandon. Each time he receives communion he is reminded of the transformative power of that love.
Dr. Ellen Davis spends most of her waking hours writing and teaching (or getting ready to write and teach) about the Bible in ways that may illuminate the difficulties and beauties of being human. Those difficulties may be personal (getting along with our neighbors), spiritual (getting along with God), or public and global (climate change, interfaith relations). Her latest book, Opening Israel’s Scriptures, was published in 2019. She is currently collaborating with professional dancers, musicians, and painter Makoto Fujimura on interpreting the Psalms through the arts.
Dr. Ellen Davis spends most of her waking hours writing and teaching (or getting ready to write and teach) about the Bible in ways that may illuminate the difficulties and beauties of being human. Those difficulties may be personal (getting along with our neighbors), spiritual (getting along with God), or public and global (climate change, interfaith relations). Her latest book, Opening Israel’s Scriptures, was published in 2019. She is currently collaborating with professional dancers, musicians, and painter Makoto Fujimura on interpreting the Psalms through the arts.
We read these stories over and over again not because we think they’ll turn out differently but because we find ourselves in the stories and we get a glimpse in them of what we can bear.
God's evolving call in the Rev. Lisa Anderson’s life has led her from pediatric chaplaincy and parish ministry to caring for those experiencing homelessness. As founding director of Room in the Inn-Memphis and pastor of Colonial Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Anderson lives each day in an atmosphere of holy hospitality. She experiences being welcomed into the lives of people who are living unsheltered as a sacred gift. Through the Room in the Inn, Anderson oversees an ecumenical network of congregations who welcome strangers and experience the incredible joy this service brings to each community of faith. As places of worship in Memphis open their doors in reaction to God's call to justice, love flows in all directions.
Rabbi Katie Bauman serves as the senior rabbi of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bauman was blessed to spend the first ten years of her rabbinate at Temple Israel in Memphis, Tennessee, where she focused on worship renewal, youth and adult education, young adult engagement, and counseling and pastoral care as an assistant and then associate rabbi. Along with her Temple Israel work, Rabbi Bauman was the founding chairperson of MICAH, Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, and was a passionate advocate for social justice as described by the Hebrew prophets. Bauman’s sense of purpose as a rabbi is derived from the experiences of revelation she has encountered through relationships across lines of difference. She believes that our capacity to bring healing and wholeness to the world is predicated on our ability to trust and love each other. Her work inside the synagogue and beyond is inspired by and devoted to bringing people into authentic and even courageous relationships with one another, believing that holiness springs from that place.
The Rev. Rufus Smith IV is the senior pastor of Hope Church (EPC) in Memphis. He joined Hope’s staff in September 2010 and became senior pastor in 2013. Under Smith’s leadership, Hope has transitioned from a predominantly Caucasian church to a multi-ethnic, multi-generational congregation. In 2016, he founded the Memphis Christian Pastor’s Network (MCPN), an ethnically and denominationally diverse clergy-only network that builds trust and broadens impact via candid conversation and collaboration. The MCPN works to reduce economic disparity in Memphis. Smith was born in Houston, TX and for 12 years served as the senior pastor of The City of Refuge (COR) Presbyterian Church. He founded The FORGE for Families (FFF), a CDC that empowers underserved neighbors in the greater 3rd Ward community in Houston. In addition, he was for three years the lead chaplain for the NBA Houston Rockets. Crazy about baseball, reading, and walking, his real claim to fame is his wife of 36 years, Jacqueline, and their three children: Ruth Abigail, Rufus V, and Rhoda Anna.
Rabbi Katie Bauman serves as the senior rabbi of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bauman was blessed to spend the first ten years of her rabbinate at Temple Israel in Memphis, Tennessee, where she focused on worship renewal, youth and adult education, young adult engagement, and counseling and pastoral care as an assistant and then associate rabbi.
She is interviewed by the Rev. Katherine Bush, associate rector at Calvary.
Jesus taught that God isn’t waiting to wreak havoc on people who go astray, but there is an urgency to our lives, and we may have to change course to find the abundant life we were made for.
The Rev. Joshua Narcisse is a proud native of Queens, NY, who now calls Memphis home. He is a minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a co-host of “The Mystic,” a monthly discussion forum on spirituality, faith, and meaning hosted at Crosstown Concourse. He currently serves as director of spiritual care at Church Health, a faith-based healthcare organization caring for the uninsured and underserved in Memphis. There he offers pastoral and spiritual support to staff and patients and coordinates interreligious programming. He is interested in the intersection of the Black church and Mysticism traditions; he is a fan of Howard Thurman, Barbara Holmes, and Richard Rohr. Narcisse is motivated by the possibilities within life-giving and God-honoring human relationships and our broader connectedness to all creation.
Dr. Nichols, a native of Memphis, TN, is the organizing pastor of Freedom’s Chapel Christian Church (DOC). Following the death of a childhood friend, Dr. Nichols created A More Excellent Way, Inc., an organization with a mission to help individuals from all walks of life to enter into, engage in, and maintain spiritually healthy relationships while eliminating relationship violence. She is a founding member of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope) and serves as Inter-Faith Officer for MIFA (Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association). She has been a visiting professor in Gweru, Zimbabwe, a church planter throughout China, and a Holy Land pilgrim. Dr. Nichols’s deepest passions are transformational teaching and working with others to seek justice, love, and mercy.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
As we prayed Psalm 27 together this morning, the raw prayer of an individual became the raw prayer of our community. We all shared in prayer the deepest longing of our heart – to be in such intimate communion with God that we dare to seek the face of our Lord.
The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers serves as Canon to Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry and spearheads Episcopal efforts concerning evangelism, reconciliation, and creation care. Her newest book, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline and New Hope for Beloved Community (March 2021), follows her popular titles Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other and the Spirit of Transformation and The Episcopal Way. Spellers has served as chaplain to the Episcopal House of Bishops, directed and taught mission and evangelism at General Theological Seminary, and served as a canon in the Diocese of Long Island. Before that, she founded The Crossing, a ground-breaking church within St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston, and led numerous church-wide renewal and justice efforts. A native of Frankfort, Kentucky, she and her husband Albert deGrasse make their home in New York's Harlem neighborhood.
A highly respected scholar and public intellectual, the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is the sixteenth President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The first woman to head the 182-year-old institution, Jones is a past president of the American Academy of Religion, which annually hosts the world’s largest gathering of scholars of religion. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University. She is the author of several books including Trauma and Grace and, most recently, her memoir Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World. Jones, a popular public speaker, holds deep grounding in theology, politics, women’s studies, economics, race studies, history, and ethics.
A highly respected scholar and public intellectual, the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is the sixteenth President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The first woman to head the 182-year-old institution, Jones is a past president of the American Academy of Religion, which annually hosts the world’s largest gathering of scholars of religion. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University. She is the author of several books including Trauma and Grace and, most recently, her memoir Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World. Jones, a popular public speaker, holds deep grounding in theology, politics, women’s studies, economics, race studies, history, and ethics.
The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers serves as Canon to Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry and spearheads Episcopal efforts concerning evangelism, reconciliation, and creation care. Her newest book, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline and New Hope for Beloved Community (March 2021), follows her popular titles Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other and the Spirit of Transformation and The Episcopal Way.
Over and again in the New Testament, we hear that we can’t disentangle what we believe about God from how we live with other people. In fact, we often learn what we really believe about God in the way we treat others.
After retiring as rector of St. Bartholomew’s in Manhattan, Buddy Stallings wondered what church for him would look like going forward, even pondering life with very little church involvement. To his delight, no matter how maddening the church sometimes can be, the church—all it is and longs to be—continues to live at the center of his life. As a priest, his path to God has been most vividly illuminated by the experience of God in others: we bear God to one another. His consolation and hope for the world rest in that conclusion. Stallings believes the marriage of an ancient faith and the postmodern world, though tricky business, is the mission of the church, a mission which can be realized only in the gritty reality of love for God, one another, the planet, and ourselves.
We come to claim Ash Wednesday as the stand-in for the unknown anniversary of the day when the fires will go out and there are only ashes. We do this not out of a sense of gross morbid curiosity, not to wallow in dark fascinations, but as O’Donohue says “to gather ourselves / and decide carefully / how we now can live / the life we would love / to look back on…”
After retiring as rector of St. Bartholomew’s in Manhattan, Buddy Stallings wondered what church for him would look like going forward, even pondering life with very little church involvement. To his delight, no matter how maddening the church sometimes can be, the church—all it is and longs to be—continues to live at the center of his life. As a priest, his path to God has been most vividly illuminated by the experience of God in others: we bear God to one another. His consolation and hope for the world rest in that conclusion. Stallings believes the marriage of an ancient faith and the postmodern world, though tricky business, is the mission of the church, a mission which can be realized only in the gritty reality of love for God, one another, the planet, and ourselves.
Jesus not only heals the son from his demon, he also works to heal the disciples and us from our addiction to knee-jerk reactions and quick fixes. He invites them and us into the slower and more fulfilling path of taking the time to listen to God and each other.
What are we spreading as Jesus’s Church? Is it the same old judgment and condemnation the world’s violent battles are made to arouse in us? Or does what we have to offer the world have a different source? A source that is mercy. A source that is love. Gift. Forgiveness. Give these away with your life, says Jesus, especially to your enemies and opponents, and these are what will come back to you and fill up your life. And when a good measure of some small mercy we’ve managed to give away, pressed down, shaken together, running over is put back into our laps, won’t we wonder why we spent even a moment of these short and precious lives of ours spreading anything less?
His words blessing the poor and the hungry and the weeping and the hated are every bit as miraculous as his words blessing the bread or inviting Peter out into the deep water. Again and again, Jesus offers a world that is more than pain and logic.
Unconditional love is a love that is too busy pouring itself out on the world to wonder whether enough love comes back to it to be worth the effort. Unconditional loving is its own reward. It’s a vibrant way of being alive in the world, not a grim Christian obligation.
What makes plans holy? I believe they are plans conceived and bathed in prayer, with little pockets of air dispersed throughout them to give room for the blowing breath of the Holy Spirit.
If you’re looking for holy scriptures that present a single, unadulterated, and righteous perspective, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere than the Bible of Christians and Jews. But I’ve come to believe that these contradictions are not flaws. They are features. They are essential to how scripture goes to work on our common life over time.
When Christ promises that he comes to bring us life in abundance, that promise is not lopsided. He comes to open our eyes to the world and its deep need, to our neighbors and their pain, to the abundance of work that must be done for justice. And he comes to show us how to dance, how to look up and see the beauty of this amazing world, to remind us to gather with friends around a table and tell stories and laugh until we cry.
Jesus wants to become fully immersed in our lives. By waiting in line, he honors the norm of the community – the community in which he wants to be fully enmeshed. He wants to be an abiding presence and a change agent within us. He wants to be a companion, waiting in line with the rest of us.
From the beginning of Jesus’s story, it’s clear that, in spite of Israel’s hope for a messiah who would deliver them definitively from the circumstances of their lives, we see their savior and ours caught in the same world that they and we are caught in. Redemption, the story tells us from its onset, will not come by way of a conquering hero or by one who transcends the limits the rest of us live confined by. Redemption, whatever it is in this story, will come from within those confines.
Precisely because it’s hard to imagine God being God in the world we need lots of stories: baby-sized and all the way up to whale-sized and to keep going, no doubt, to the reaches of our language and of our imaginations.
What’s more, this Jesus will grow up and teach us a different way to live in a world like ours. And his method will not be to reassure pretty good folks like us that we pretty much see things for what they are. He will tell stories, violate norms, ask questions meant to provoke or expose our deep confusion about how God sees things. He will tell us that the ones we see as last, and least, and lost are the first ones God seeks out and finds. He’ll insist that we find our lives by laying them down for one another. That we save them by losing them. And he will live out what he taught us all the way to the incomprehensible love we see on the cross and in the resurrection of that love, even on the far side of death.
Your skin and your bones are so wonderful, and they are good even on the days when you and I wonder about that, and they are carrying us around this big, tumultuous world. And yet, you and I are also so much more than skin and bones. I wonder about those moments when the realization grabs us, as surely as Elizabeth grabbed Mary. When we are touched and touched; when we feel someone squeezing our hand or something opening our heart that and know there’s more – more to us, more to our lives, more to this world than we had previously dared to imagine.
Maybe the God of Advent is a God who loves us too deeply to be anything but angry and hurt when we build our lives on nothing. A God who grieves when we turn from the offer of God’s selfless love and build false selves for the sake of a world that says, “Sure I’ll love you if it’s in my interest to do so. Knock yourself out proving you’re worth my attention.” Maybe Malachi rages like a jilted lover because God won’t let us settle for lives built on such fickle, conditional loves instead of on the one great Love that will never let us go.
Advent, and life for that matter, are not only about Jesus coming to us. They are also about us coming to him. Are we willing to draw near to him in faith? Are we willing to acknowledge and to accept help beyond what we can do for ourselves?
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D., is dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary.
Our real lives are intertwined with the kingdom and the saints. We don’t leave one world and enter another when we walk into or out of church or the woods or our homes or our offices or our classrooms. It’s not separate, none of it. The boundaries are not fixed – in fact, there might not be any boundaries at all. Because it’s all real. Nothing is separate. The home of God is among mortals. This is real.
So maybe there’s a way of remembering, even a form of nostalgia, that is not a wishing we were back in another time and place, but the opening of a present experience of love for the world as it is, in all its beauty and brokenness. And maybe there’s a love for the things of the world, even by way of memory or nostalgia or that sacred homesickness, that can actually be, not a distraction from, but the way into an expanded love in us for God. Put another way, what if learning to actually feel a form of love for my neighbor, with all his quirks and sins, is how I actually learn to feel a transforming love for God?
“Take heart. Get up. He is calling you.” Take heart. Take another look at the one standing in front of us, offering us eyesight and insight. “My teacher, let me see again.” Can you and I see where Christ might heal each of us, and can we see the way that God might lead you and me, and how beautiful the way might be if we just opened our eyes?
Like a number of buzzwords and phrases in business, the term ‘servant-leadership’ has been bandied about so much that it can seem to lose its meaning. At its heart, it is not just a business philosophy. It is a way of life. As we move forward together as families, as a congregation, as a people, how do we serve each other along the way, and learn that the service we offer each other may be the Way?
See, I really do think this is a love story. A sad one, about how hard we can make it for love, even God’s love, to get through to us.
As we see the divine gaze in the human mirror of each other, we accept the unconditional absolution and love of God and the desire to do better in offering that same love to all those around us. We need to change our ways of being and seeing, and then we need to make amends.
Silence. There may be as many forms of it as there are words in a language. And I’m beginning to wonder whether all sorts of silences, not just the reverent and prayerful ones, are worth paying attention to when we come across them in scripture.
In many ways, the cross is a symbol for Ubuntu. The four points of the cross can be seen as arrows pointing outward to embrace and connect Jesus and all humanity in all directions, south, north, east, and west. The four points can also be seen with arrows pointing inward to acknowledge that we each bring unique gifts to Jesus and to each other, and that we are somehow more because of each gift, and more importantly, because of each person.
So James looked around. And he saw fellow Christians, who said that they believed in the radical leveling of humanity in the way of Jesus, where there was supposedly no longer Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. And yet here were Jesus’s people arranging themselves according to the same old criteria the world had always used. He could tell by their seating charts and the deference they paid to certain kinds of people who dressed in certain ways that they didn’t believe what they said they believed. It’s not that you have to do good works to prove you have faith. It’s just that, no matter what you say you believe, what you actually believe will always win out. Always. So all James is really asking is that people stop deceiving themselves. Start there. With the truth your life is telling all the time.
The Song of Songs and Reverend Al teach us that there is an intersubjectivity to our lives and that we are all in this together. The Song of Songs reminds us that God longs to relish that kind of connection with us, and yearns for us to relish it with each other. And God longs to end our anxieties, to fill us with hope, and to inspire us to be that hope.
When Jesus tells the people after the feeding that he is the bread of life, he is not giving a lesson in eucharistic theology. And when he says “believe in me,” he is not establishing membership requirements for becoming a Christian. He is inviting them into a deeper, more mature life, a life of intimate connection to one he calls Father, the source of all life.
It’s astonishing that stories written down more than 25 centuries ago, stories about two humans and a tree in a garden or a king who realizes he’ll need wisdom to rule well … it’s amazing that these stories speak so clearly and directly to life in a nuclear age of quarks and quantum computing and all the rest. What they ask is, “Do you have the wisdom, the moral discernment, to be entrusted with the knowledge or authority or power that you possess?” And too often, from that moment in the garden, to the U.N. climate report just last week, the answer has been a sobering, “No. No we don’t.” Too often we haven’t possessed the wisdom, or even the humility to ask for that wisdom, to use our knowledge or power to bring our lives and our world back into the wholeness we long for. The wholeness something in us knows we were made for.
I don’t suppose you could argue successfully that Memphis is on any kind of mountaintop, but it is on a bluff above a mighty river; and that is not nothing. What I not only believe but know is that there have been many transfigured moments within the life of this community—moments when light has shown brighter than any darkness around. I believe that pairing our founding with this sacred story from scripture is appropriate and more importantly that it is inspirational for us these nearly 200 years after the birth of this wonderful parish.
The brilliance of the story is that we’re all Davids. It’s so easy to see what’s wrong in someone else. Nathan shows David to himself only by making him think he’s looking at someone else. Someone at whom all of David’s righteous indignation and moral superiority is aroused to set things right. And then, what may be the most unbelievable thing in David’s whole unbelievable saga happens. Nathan’s fable works. David actually sees that he’s the man he’s just judged. More importantly, he sees himself in a way that may just be truthful enough for him to begin to see the people around him for who they are too.
Jesus is teaching his disciples, the 5,000 gathered, and us that in this new kingdom he is bringing about, nothing is lost. Nothing is wasted. And he is not just talking about food. He is talking about people. All our lives have significance and purpose. And just as he gave instructions to gather every last crumb, Jesus will not abandon any of us.
It might seem like what would open us best to surprise would need to be strange and unfamiliar, but it doesn’t. Our worship tradition, our hymns and organ pipes and tower bells, our chalices and vestments and wobbly brass crosses are more like idols if they only settle us reassuringly into the stability of the past. They’re meant to be objects carried through the wilderness of so many centuries to startle us into a present hope that God can make something new, not only of us, but of our world. They are relics and reminders from lives and times in which God has done just that.
Whatever yearning that John the Baptist’s presence and words had stirred up inside Herod Antipas was being denied oxygen before it really had a chance to breathe, through Herod's own evil order. His false integrity of being true to a misguided oath severed his hope for real integrity in the possibility of developing an inner spiritual anchor through further conversations with John.
Christian theologians today, like Kathryn Tanner, are asking Christians to look again at how the societies and economies we live in now form us and even ask us to understand Jesus’s teaching on their terms, rather than the other way around. Which means that you and I, if we’re to be faithful to Jesus, must struggle to ground our deepest identity in his way, his truth, his life. Even as we acknowledge that we are social creatures, dependent on the people and culture and society in which we live. Even as we acknowledge that Jesus’s own healing, redeeming work took place within all the relationships and norms and customs that formed him. Some of which he cherished. Some of which he challenged.
In today’s Gospel, we meet two people who hope for something more. One woman hopes that just by reaching out and touching Jesus she will be healed. One man, with a daughter close to death, hopes Jesus can just get to her in time. Two very different people, one very same hope brings them through the crowd.
I want a faith and a language about faith that delivers me more fully to the world I’m alive in and matters to the life I’m actually living in that world. Don’t you? If I hear a phrase like “Jesus saves,” which I very much believe, I don’t want it to register like a number on the Richter scale. I want to be thinking about being saved from forces that might stop a pendulum clock, cause walls to creak, or throw objects upward into the air. I don’t want to hear about the saving power of Jesus in ways that don’t relate to the ways I know I need to be saved. Wouldn’t you agree?
Mark seems to be telling us that there is not a point that can be extracted from the stories. The point, or the power of Jesus’s message is only experienced from within the stories. Maybe because, as Flannery O’Connor put it, “A story really isn’t any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase.” The gospel, according to Mark, can’t be paraphrased. It must be entered. Trusted. Experienced. That’s how all true stories work.
What would it mean for us to be icons – at work, at home, and around this city with everyone we encounter? What would it mean to look at each situation we face, even our biggest problem or our deepest hurt, as an opportunity to be raised up to the eternal presence of God, and to invite others to be raised up alongside us? What would it mean to write your whole life as a prayer?
Our names for God, our concepts of God, our doctrines of God are not God. They are tools. Tools whose sole purpose is to bring us near to God.
The space between the logs. I think that is where we find the Holy Spirit. It is in the deep breaths between actions. It is in the silences between words and music. It is in the rocks turned into snowflakes.
But if Judas was actually a good guy who was just misunderstood, the story of our redemption loses something else. It no longer includes the kind of betrayal that really happens in this world. And in some ways, such a betrayal really can be a culmination of all sorts of forces that break our lives and our world apart. There are questions of power and money and violence and loyalty and so much more wrapped up in the character of Judas. And he wasn’t just one of the hundred sheep in Jesus’s fold. He was one of the twelve closest people to Jesus. One who, according to Matthew, felt remorse, tried to give the blood money back, and, when he failed, took his own life.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives the disciples his commandment, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” After eight years here, I hear Calvary’s commandment: that I go out into the world and love as I have been loved here.
At the end of the day, love is grace. Endless, undeserved, unexplainable grace for ourselves and others, for our quirks and mistakes. Grace.
But what I do trust is that we were brought together by the Holy Spirit, whose reconciling work in the world happens through our hopeful and failing selves. The church is one of those rare places in the world where we voluntarily enter a room with people we just don’t get. You sit down by strangers and hear that those who do not love do not know God, and sometimes you you feel deeply the implications of such a belief — you fearfully declare it the Word of the Lord. You look around the room and wonder if you’re up to the work. You look inside yourself and find a heart capable but not always willing, itself a maze of excuses and excesses and anxieties that keep you from knowing your true self — the one beloved and redeemed by God.
Throughout this past year and in the time going forward, it means everything to know that the Lord is with us, and that his rod and staff comfort us. We are called to share this comfort with one another, to help each other find and go down the right paths, to wipe away one another’s tears.
So, what if Easter is about letting go of some of our concrete expectations and understandings, and learning to see deeper connections and patterns and meanings, the timeless way, a quality without a name in our faith beneath its familiar forms?
Jesus teaches his disciples and us that the Good News isn’t good if it stays in a locked room. Are we ready to go out and share and be the Good News? Are we ready to be apostles?
But if we begin with terror and amazement we’ve known, we can enter the redemption story from right here. Because there never was a more holy age than ours. Our strange pandemic age included.
Jesus starts with the particular and moves to the universal. One of his last thoughts on the cross was about one particular person, his mother. Would this person I love so much be taken care of? Before pouring out his life as a libation for the renewal of all creation, he does the very human thing of making sure Mary is taken care of. That was not just a human thing, but a true act of divinity.
It’s hard to use the word love, even if you’re Jesus, at supper with your friends, the night before you’re going to die. There are so many ways to get love wrong.
Inexperience was the exact quality Jesus was seeking to do something that had never before been done, to create a very different kind of kingdom. A kingdom not of might or domination, but a kingdom of the heart. The colt that had never been ridden could offer that gift of inexperience and naivete, the ability to carry Jesus into the city to help him and us see it through new eyes.
Inexperience was the exact quality Jesus was seeking to do something that had never before been done, to create a very different kind of kingdom. A kingdom not of might or domination, but a kingdom of the heart. The colt that had never been ridden could offer that gift of inexperience and naivete, the ability to carry Jesus into the city to help him and us see it through new eyes.
The senior rabbi at Temple Israel, Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. "Torah" in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God's unity. What inspires Greenstein most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000-year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God's partner in healing a broken world.
The Rev. Kirk Whalum believes that music is the language that communicates across borders. Music can break and enter into a person’s soul. The difference is a musician is not there to take; he’s there to give, to leave something. Whalum’s saxophone style blends his Memphis roots with Houston nightclubs and Parisian concert halls. When not on tour, he serves on the faculty of the Visible Music College in Memphis.
The Rev. Kirk Whalum believes that music is the language that communicates across borders. Music can break and enter into a person’s soul. The difference is a musician is not there to take; he’s there to give, to leave something. Whalum’s saxophone style blends his Memphis roots with Houston nightclubs and Parisian concert halls. When not on tour, he serves on the faculty of the Visible Music College in Memphis.
As creation constantly gives itself away, as one life within it is laid down for the next, as rot becomes nourishment for fallen seeds, where they die to become something new, we see that the cross and resurrection were not strange exceptions to the way things are. You and I are, when we cling fearfully to our separate lives at all costs, even imagining life in Christ exempts or insulates us from loss and hurt and even death. It does not. But it does place our lives and our deaths in a larger story of love.
The Rev. Dr. Fentress-Williams lives at the intersection of the church and the academy. In addition to her tenured teaching position at Virginia Theological Seminary, she serves as the Senior Assistant to the Pastor for Teaching and Preaching at the Alfred Street Baptist Church. Dr. Fentress-Williams’ published work reflects her interest in a literary approach that highlights the multiple voices in scripture. She recently published a commentary on the book of Ruth for the Abingdon Old Testament Commentary Series and was a contributor and Old Testament Editor for the CEB Women’s Bible. In May 2019, Dr. Fentress-Williams delivered a message of challenge and celebration at the ordination of the bishop of West Tennessee, the Rt. Rev. Phoebe Roaf.
As a rabbi drawn to Hasidism and Kabbalah, and a practitioner of Perennial Wisdom found at the mystic heart of all religions, Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s message is simple: Alles iz Gott: everything is a manifesting of God. He is inspired by anyone who dares to step outside the safety of sacred opinion to experience and perhaps utter Truth beyond “ism” and ideology. Love is a reaction to images we hold of others rather than to the others themselves. With this in mind, Shapiro prefers to meet others as they are rather than love them as he imagines them to be.
The Rev. Amber Carswell interviews Rabbi Rami Shapiro about his ministry as a Rabbi, speaker, and author.
Maybe it would do us some good to take a hard look and unflinching listen to the words we wince to hear. We might stop making Scripture into our own image, for one thing, or buying into the image that others have imposed upon it. And that kind of deep engagement can lead us to hear it with new ears: “For God so loved the world,” this world, our world, the one right around you. You could see with new eyes the way the old age is passing away, you could see where creation groans and calls your name, beckoning you into the light.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.
In the end, if there is a clear and unambiguous roadmap for a just and godly life, it is not the scriptures of Christians and Jews. Because our scriptures refuse to let even our scriptures become an idol by modeling a beautiful inconsistency. One that won’t even let a Law written by the finger of God have the last word. One that provides space for a single Moabite widow to walk into it and say, “What about me?”
A native Texan and Tennessee transplant, The Rev. Meredith Day Hearn is an Evangelical turned Episcopal priest. Graduating from Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in 2015, Meredith’s love of poetry, songwriting, and storytelling deeply informs her understanding of God in the world. Her preaching seeks to investigate the sanctity of the ordinary, highlighting life’s inevitable suffering alongside its propensity for great beauty. After serving at Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal in Memphis, Meredith recently moved to Cincinnati where she serves as priest-in-charge of The Indian Hill Church.
Dynamic, significant, and prophetic, Jemar Tisby is a public historian with the ability to explore racial justice solutions and cultural conversations that compel listeners to action. He provides audiences with richly-informed explorations, unflinching moral insight, and clear paths forward. He has recently taken the position of CEO of The Witness Incorporated, a nonprofit organization he founded, which is dedicated to Black uplift from a Christian perspective. Jemar is the author of two books, The Color of Compromise—a New York Times bestseller—and How to Fight Racism, released in January 2021. His writing has also been featured in the Washington Post, CNN, and The Atlantic among others. Tisby is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Mississippi studying race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century.
The Rev. Paul McLain and Mr. Jemar Tisby engage in conversation about race, religion, and more.
Saint Peter, Ida Wells, and we learn that to follow Jesus is to walk alongside suffering, including our own. Our call is to bear witness to the suffering, and when we see that evil is the root cause of some of the suffering and death around us, we shine a light on it and we root it out.
Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. She is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear each Monday.
Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. She is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear each Monday.
After the flood, Noah and his family do not become gods. They are not granted immortality. But they are given a promise. A promise and a sign. God’s weapon, a great and colorful bow, is laid down for good in the Hebrew story. It is pointed up at the sky and away from us forever, to remind us every time the sun cuts through a rain, that any deluge to come will not be God’s doing. A reminder that God has made a covenant with all the descendants of Noah, which are all the human beings who will ever be, and with every living creature on earth, the story says, that God will not be our destroyer.
The Rev. Dan Matthews is a consistent favorite at Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. His preaching is inspired by powerful and meaningful stories like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In light of these stories, Matthews pushes us to recognize when genuine blessings come our way. He believes that these moments of being “kissed by God” are more than being in the right place at the right time. His spiritual discipline of holy love is modeled after his mother’s ability to love with abandon. This year Matthews will preach on “What Jesus Means By Loving Your Neighbor.”
The gift of holy forgetfulness is one that comes from the very heart of God. It is what God does. The psalmist sings that our transgressions are removed from us “as far as the east is from the west,” which is, of course, an infinite distance. They are not packed nicely and neatly into a manageable corner of a forgotten closet. They are gone — maybe not from your mind as they swirl in your head in the vulnerable hours of night, but forgotten by the one who matters, the one who removes them, God. It’s God’s holy forgetfulness that we call on and trust in on this day particularly.
Lent is a time to listen, to see, to sense, and to pray. It is a time to give space for the light of Christ to penetrate the fog and shine through the darkness. It is a time for us to be and share that light with each other and the world around us. It is a time for us to offer big and little gifts of revelation.
Jesus’s healings were primarily symbolic actions, meant to violate and disrupt the social order of his day. They were challenges to the structures that defined who counts as human, because the kingdom of God has a scandalously different definition of who does.
Demons are one way Christians have talked about this idea that really, the essential you, past your mental and psychological baggage, past the body and its abilities, past the mood fluctuations and mindfulness exercises, deep down past your DNA and your questionable wardrobe choices, there is a you. Of course, we’re careful to say all of those outside things matter in the growth of a soul, you are an embodied being — but that there’s something intrinsic and wholly good at every person’s core. We call it the image of God. Sometimes this image is hidden, obfuscated under complicated and interwoven layers of choices and influences. But it is there in you — and everyone who has ever lived.
The hope buried in the heartbreaking story of Jonah is that it asks us whom it would hurt us to see forgiven. And it asks us to see the mercy of God extending to them, not only for their sake, but for ours. For opening yourself to the One who so fervently adores precisely these, is to apprehend just how near that fervent love has also always been to you.
There could be no Samuel without an Eli. And there could be no Eli without a Samuel. Samuel went on to live out the lessons Eli taught him. He stood up to kings, He told truth to power. And he never stopped listening to the voice of God.
On Tuesday morning, I decided to preach about hate today. Which, some would say, is not a typical topic for the Sunday of Jesus’s baptism. But, in my morning devotions, I’d been reading from Jesus and the Disinherited, a slender but remarkable book by Howard Thurman, published in 1949. And the chapter I read from Tuesday morning was titled “Hate.” You see, Howard Thurman says we can’t comprehend Jesus’s costly way of redeeming love until we’ve dealt truthfully about what needs redeeming in this world and in our lives. Specifically, we must deal truthfully with fear, deception, and hate. And Christians have been pretty sentimental in our considerations of hatred in human life. We’ve hoped to get rid of it “by preachments, by moralizing, by platitudinous judgments,” as Thurman puts it, but we have not been willing to examine where it comes from and how it affects us when we’re possessed by it.
What we need to be are more like magi if we’re to be Jesus’s Church. Spending our energy only on the act of giving our gifts away to one another, to our neighborhoods, to our cities, to the next stranger who stumbles in upon us. We’re to be a community that’s continually laying things at other people’s feet and letting them go. Tending, most essentially, not to the things or the influence or the relevance or the membership rolls or the buildings that we possess.
Maybe the message of the tenth day of Christmas, the New Year’s fallout, is that this pursuit of the divine contains all this, too. Jesus goes dark for twenty years after this event, growing and listening and questioning. As much as we wanted God to show up and make all things immediately right, apparently faith isn’t an on/off switch. Your salvation isn’t a formula.
This is the sign, in a Bible full of signs. Signs that are not meant to satisfy us, but to draw us into the ways God has come to us over time. And Incarnation is the sign in which we meet God down at the broken and ordinary end of things where we live.
There’s an old rabbi with the fabulous name of Ben Bag Bag who offers this advice on reading Scripture: “Turn it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in it; do not budge from it, for there is nothing that works better than it.”
“…this Advent I invite you to spend a little less time anticipating, no matter what you’ve been told Advent is all about. I invite you to spend less time anticipating whatever it is you think will finally make you whole, whether it’s more time or more knowledge or more progress toward anything at all you don’t think you have enough of. Instead of yearning for some other life or even for a Messiah you hope will come barreling through the wilderness to give it to you, this Advent, practice the liberating humility of Isaiah. A humility that rests on resting in the miracle of the one short life you’ve been given.”
I’m often asked when will the Second Coming of Jesus take place, or has it already taken place, or is it constantly taking place. A more important question is: what is Jesus coming to do? Yes, he is coming to restore us and to save us. But more importantly, he is coming to recondition our hearts.
Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the final Sunday of our church year, we mimic the trees outside in shedding our green coverings. Since about 1925, this day has also been called Christ the King Sunday. In terms of public holiday awareness, I think this day probably ranks right up there with Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day or National Scrapple Day, these holidays that really do exist but only for a few people with some very niche interests.
There is a deep paradox in the way of Jesus. At its heart, it is a way of grace over law, a way of unconditional love and radical acceptance. But he also tells us this way will cost us everything, beginning with our impulses toward self-preservation and our need for security above all else. The liberating, world healing, abundant life of Jesus demands making our peace with these risky lives we’ve been given, and not giving them over to fear. Or, as Marilynne Robinson puts it, “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”
Covenant inherently means there are separations and divisions that need to be knit back together. We can see this in our personal and communal journeys, especially when we try to move forward without God. We can see this in our national life, where we as the Church are called to be the voice of unity, civility, service, understanding, healing, hope, peace, and love.
The feast of All Saints, I think, is meant to go to work on the hearts of Christian people in a number of ways. One is that it’s meant to expand our bubbles by expanding the bubble our definition of the Church lives within. Another is to see the Church, and by extension, all of humanity, as a living, growing, emergent, interconnected whole, of which any one of us is a tiny, but utterly unique and essential part. The communion of saints is vast and old and wondrous and awful at times, and it would be sadly incomplete if it didn’t include you.
Sometimes I hear “love” used as a panacea; e.g., just add love and it’ll be better. I think anyone who has spent any time in a family with others understands the demands and complications and sacrifices of real love. I’m always suspicious when love looks like the path of least resistance, when it’s easy on us, when it’s easy for us. Anything worth doing is difficult, and if love is the thing most worth doing, it does follow that it would be the most difficult.
You see, sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to be put in your place. For many of us, the orbits of our lives have gotten so much smaller over the past months. We feel so much less in control of what we can do and where we can go. Our hurts and our flaws seem to surface more quickly and stand out more starkly on the small stages of our coronavirus lives. It all takes its toll. But grace doesn’t work by giving us greater control over our lives and our world or by making our sins and anxieties and unhelpful habits just go away. No, sometimes grace goes to work on us by locating us. By saying, “You are small, and you are broken, but you are here. In all this beautiful vastness that belongs ultimately only to God, all of who you are is part of all this too.”
Intercessory prayer changes us as much as it does the person or persons for whom we are praying. As we lift up each name before God, we are somehow lifted up to God as well. We carry the messiness and the murkiness of our own lives, and our hope for ourselves and others in the midst of that messiness and murkiness into the life and light of God. And God listens. And God cares. And God acts. And often, God weeps.
The story of Exodus is a story about how hard it is for anyone to be set free from Pharaoh. How does one stop serving the gods of greed and accumulation and begin to trust the God who feeds everyone only enough for each day? How do you unlearn the habits of domination and subjugation, to learn the sort of independence that entails mutual, community-wide thriving? How can we begin to trust the kindness and mercy of God… and maybe just as importantly, become people of kindness and mercy?
We learn the ways of the kingdom of heaven as we practice the art of receiving and the art of letting go. So that maybe one day, to the vineyard owner’s question, “Are you envious because I am generous?” a eucharistic people will come to answer, “Yes. But we are starved for another way of being. Deliver us from our obsessions with fairness and status and anything but grace. Teach us to receive our lives from your hand, so we can turn back to your beloved vineyard and let what we’ve been given go. We’ve at least begun to see that your kingdom will not come to us any other way.”
Gratitude, like legacy, is not a concrete noun. At its best, it too is an active verb. It is a gift to be paid forward, especially to the young and the most vulnerable among us. But gratitude is more than action, it is a way of life.
What the way of Jesus requires of his community is not unqualified inclusion of everything, but a radical, unconditional love for every human being, especially the least and the last. And then he calls us to a way of forgiveness that extends all the way out to our enemies. These are not ways of being that humans simply fall into when given the freedom to do so. They require us to consciously build a different kind of culture together as his church, and to be uncompromising about the demands that a truthful way of love makes on our lives.
Poor Peter. It was only last week where he and Jesus had a real moment together. See, Jesus has been making a name for himself, and it’s not altogether a good one. Sure, people know who he is, but the room gets quiet when he walks in, the people cough and look away and some do that thing where they make a loud statement to try and make it look like they haven’t just been talking about him. People in his home town snub him, say he’s getting a big head. Teenage girls giggle and point when he walks by, the mysteries of their affections known sometimes to themselves and never to others. Jesus has started avoided walking by the police, and after that bad business with the pigs, the pork industry has him labeled as some fanatic Jewish PETA activist.
So, what’s this “Saved Savior” trope in the Bible all about? Have you noticed it? Maybe not the term “Saved Savior,” since I made it up yesterday. But have you noticed that a lot of the most important savior types in the Bible have to get saved themselves first?
Forgiveness is needed as much by the forgiver as the forgiven. Joseph didn’t know how much he needed to forgive them, until that moment when the tears rushed out of him.
The Transfiguration, you see, is a story with all kinds of echoes and allusions, isn’t it. It looks a lot like Jesus’s baptism, with a voice from heaven announcing, “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!” And it’s got all the trappings of an Old Testament encounter with the divine. It’s not subtle. Moses himself is there, the first person to shine with glory from being in the presence of God on a mountain. And Elijah was too, the prophet who left earth in a flaming chariot, not death, and who was expected to return to make things right.
It’s telling that in Scripture, God makes creation by naming. He creates the stars and brings them into being by calling them each by name. Creation appears as an answer to God’s speech, the Word goes forth and creates, makes new, and a resounding wave of God’s own life bounces back to God, “it does not return to him empty,” as Isaiah sings. Humanity is a particular piece of this whole movement, that God is constantly speaking to us who we are, and we, in the process of our creation, are trying to resemble that Word more and more, to repeat it back more fully. We are called, all of us; and that calling is to be ourselves, as particular as each star in resounding back a common chorus of God’s self-giving, compassionate love.
Believing such a gospel can change us. Believing such a gospel could give us the courage to be more truthful about our fears and our failures because it insists that the kingdom of God actually blossoms and rises and searches among the fearful and the failed. Believing this about ourselves might then make room in our hearts for the failures of our neighbors. And if we were really to let this nonsense transform us to the extent it did Jesus himself, we might even wonder whether the archest of our enemies — our crucifiers, even — is where God’s kingdom is most likely to bloom into being next. Forgiveness is just how we manage to be present when it does.
Through our adoption as God’s children - God’s heirs, grace is no longer a simple formula for our salvation. Instead, grace opens up an entire tapestry of a rich, often messy, ongoing journey in relationship, marked by growth, learning, forgiveness, service, and love.
There is an element of acceptance and an element of disruption in the life of faith. Both are essential. We need people in our lives who tend more toward one than the other. We need firstborns and we need tricksters. Maybe what we need to accept first is that there’s some of each of them in each of us. And maybe if we can learn to befriend the Jacob and the Esau in ourselves our lives will grow toward the wholeness God has made us for.
This conversation between the Rev. Scott Walters and Dr. Scott Morris is the latest in our podcast series with Lenten Preaching Series speakers and other faith leaders, authors, and creative thinkers around the world. Dr. Scott Morris describes himself as “a one-note guy” who focuses on the link between faith and health. He believes that to follow Jesus, Christians must have a healing ministry. The people, patients, staff, and volunteers he has worked with since founding Church Health in 1987 inspire Morris to explore the scope of God’s imagination and encourage him in his journey of love and following Jesus. Morris holds that if we care for our bodies as well as our spirits, we will become closer to God.
Sitting in the car the other day, Missy and I were chatting about the takedown of monuments and the difficulties of honoring figures in the past. I could probably find a more incendiary way to start a sermon if I tried, but actually, my point is that I veered off on a long tangent about how well Jesus has aged. Considering the vast differences in societal views between then and now, concerning women or the disabled or belief of the worth of human lives in general, he comes out remarkably clean.
Ever since I built my first blanket shelter, I liked the idea that I got to decide who to let in. And the notion that by providing for myself and my family I’m being a decent and responsible citizen goes deep. I knew the rules well enough to play at this kind of responsibility by the time I was five. But what Jesus seems to be saying is that this is the perspective my mind has to be trained out of if I’m really to comprehend the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom whose only currency is grace and gift. He seems to say I have to learn the way of utter dependence. I need to learn to live as someone dependent upon welcome. The way of the beggar, even. Isn’t that how he sent out his disciples? As beggars?
Both the wilderness path and settlement path are blessed. But it often appears God may favor the uncharted path in the wilderness, the uncertain path where we must rely on God for everything.
Looking for ways to create positive change in the world even during a pandemic? Look no further than this interview between Heidi Rupke and the Rev. Fletcher Harper, the latest in our series of Lenten Preaching Series podcasts highlighting the work of faith leaders, authors and creative thinkers. The Rev. Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith, an organization that inspires people to form local "green circles" around issues of importance to local communities. Organizationally, GreenFaith pushes for government policies that protect people and land in the broadest possible sense. Conversationally, the Rev. Harper describes the importance of relationships, spirituality found through text and creation, and the decisive actions that result from all of these. Search for Calvary Episcopal Church on your favorite podcast app or go to calvarymemphis.org/podcast.
"There is a problem in us when we remove the trauma from our founding stories. There is a problem in us when we tell sanitized, cherry tree versions of our history or when we deny that we are the heirs in the deepest of ways of very flawed and sinful people. And the problem is that we can’t deal with the trauma in our lives today when we pretend its roots are only in the day before yesterday."
I have taught the Bible to Episcopalians now for many years, even as I remain the Bible’s student, learning from a text that I can only describe as alive — alive with the spirit of God, which has the power to lodge in our souls and transform them.
Maybe understanding people who should be incomprehensible to us will still be the sign that we’re beginning to live less according to the flesh… Less as individuals who understand themselves over and against their rivals and more as a people who live by a spirit that truly wants communion among all of God’s children. A Pentecostal people who won’t be satisfied any longer with a life that is anything less.
This conversation between the Rev. Paul McLain and David Waters is the latest in our podcast series with Lenten Preaching Series speakers and other faith leaders, authors, and creative thinkers around the world. David Waters is assistant director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis and columnist for the Daily Memphian. He was previously faith and education reporter for The Commercial Appeal and religion editor for The Washington Post. In this wide-ranging conversation, David and Paul talk about the longing for context in journalism especially in view of the pandemic, the response of the Memphis faith community to COVID-19, how childhood trauma and poverty in Shelby County have impacted reading levels, and the power of bottom-up approaches to the greatest challenges for our city and the church.
Jesus in flight sees the cosmos as a whole. He sees beyond the imaginary boundaries of earthly kingdoms and imagines a world of boundless beauty and possibilities.
I’m interested in the Areopagus and in Paul’s clever imitation of Socrates in his argument. I like that he approached the Athenians rhetorically through an alley door they’d left ajar in their religious system, using their altar to an unknown god to lure them into the big T Truth. But honestly, right about now, I have a lot less need for what’s clever in my life than I do for what is real. And I think this story is about returning us and returning our religion to what is real. We have a way of wandering away from the real, both as a species and as individuals.
This conversation between Scott Walters and Molly McCully Brown is the latest in our podcast series with Lenten Preaching Series speakers and other faith leaders, authors, and creative thinkers around the world. Molly McCully Brown is the author of the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded which was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017, and the forthcoming essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body. Across forms and genres, her work is occupied with place, faith, art, desire, and the complicated, ongoing challenge of an embodied existence, and motivated by the belief that language doesn’t just express but makes reality.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sophie Pauti and I am a senior at Memphis Central High School. Thursday, March 12th was the day we found out that spring break was going to be a week longer. I took this as a blessing from God himself because I had been telling my mom “I’m tired of school, I am ready to walk across that stage and get that diploma today!!” Little did I know that March 12th would be my last day of high school. It’s like the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ and I definitely have learned that lesson the hard way. Since that day I have been quarantined in my house, sitting and thinking about what the future holds for me and the rest of the world. Will this pandemic affect the people I love the most? Will it allow me to go to college in the fall? Will there be a vaccine by the end of 2020? Will the world ever go back to normal? What’s next?
I don’t know about you, but when things are bad, my motto is that misery loves company. When everything fell apart with the coronavirus, in the absence of living miserable human company, right off the bat I read Daniel Defoe’s journal of the plague year from the 1600s. When we moved into isolation to save ourselves, the severe and bizarre desert fathers, the earliest Christian monastic movement, would take me 10,000 steps farther to choosing to live one’s whole life in a 10’ square cell. Times get bad, and I want the company of detailed histories of past miseries.
This conversation between Heidi Rupke and Kaitlin Curtice is the latest in our podcast series with Lenten Preaching Series speakers and other faith leaders, authors, and creative thinkers around the world. An enrolled member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band and also a practicing Christian, Kaitlin Curtice writes on the intersection of Indigenous spirituality, Christian faith in everyday life, and the church. Her latest book, Native, is about identity, soul-searching, and the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God.
On Good Friday we lingered for a bit in the silence of Jesus when Pilate asks, “What is truth?” He wouldn’t… or at least he didn’t give an answer. What I put forth in that sermon was that we humans tend to mistake explanations for the truth sometimes. Or maybe it’s better said that we too often think the truth can be reduced to an explanation.
Salvation is a present reality as well as a future hope. First Peter more aptly describes these two dimensions as one by calling them a “living hope.” When Jairus said to Jesus, “Come and save my daughter,” Jesus didn’t say, “I’ll take care of that in the after-life.” Instead, Jesus went to the bedside and saved his daughter. And he saved someone else along the way.
This conversation between the Rev. Paul McLain and Jemar Tisby is among the first in our podcast series with Lenten Preaching Series speakers and other faith leaders, authors, and creative thinkers around the world. Jemar Tisby is the author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church's Complicity in Racism. Jemar is a graduate of Notre Dame and Reformed Theological Seminary and is a Ph.D. candidate at Ole Miss in history. In this wide-ranging conversation, Jemar and Paul discuss the effects of COVID-19 on communities of color, ways the church has been complicit in racial inequality since colonial times, the relationship between Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr., and how we can move forward together through awareness, relationships, and commitment.
Have you ever come to the Easter story with a sense that we can take out whatever seems unhelpful, unbelievable, incomprehensible, or strange? And then enrich it with the meanings we think we need? I almost certainly will again before I finish this sermon. All I know to do is to come clean and ask you to agree with me that what we hope to do this Easter morning is to take our lives as they actually are to the Good News as it actually is and trust that what we are most in need of God has already knit deep within it.
This Easter season I find myself most identifying with Jesus’s male disciples. Their first experience of the resurrection did not happen through the magnificent appearance of an angel or by falling at the feet of the risen Jesus himself. Instead, resurrection came to them as they were locked away in their homes, just as you are tonight.
In the Good Friday service in the Book of Common Prayer, after the reading of the Passion Gospel, a rubric states flatly: “The Sermon follows.” Rubric comes from the Latin word for red, the color that these directions used to be printed in to make sure they weren’t overlooked, or spoken aloud, I suppose. A liturgical planner will develop a keen eye for the little word may, since it makes the instruction optional. There is no may in the rubric about a Good Friday sermon.
Maundy Thursday begins our Easter Triduum, the three holiest days of ritual in the Christian calendar. Let me start by saying to you, gathered at home: You are not missing out on the essence of Maundy Thursday.
“Hosanna!” the people cry. This is not another word of praise like Hallelujah; they had a word for that, and it was Hallelujah. Hosanna literally means Save — a cry for help. Save us! the people cry. There’s a sense of frantic joy mixed in, like the shipwrecked crew who spot a rescue helicopter — if only the helicopter would spot them. Hosanna. In April 2020, my Hosanna feels closer to true than it ever has, particularly when I am thinking of my family full of essential workers, and my many friends in the medical community, and the vulnerable and the elderly and alone. That’s where my Hosanna has become true.
It strikes me that what’s different about the present crisis is that, while markets may be reeling, what worries us most deeply is that people, flesh and bone people, are not able to contribute their part to our common life. The images of actual lives being cut off from each other is even more vivid than plummeting market returns.
Even in this time of social distancing, we are still blessed with an abundance of social capital. We have so much love to offer one another! We have so much love to offer a whole world that needs it. Never has the Church needed to be the Church more than now.
Since any statutes of limitations should have expired by now, I’ll risk confessing to you that we didn’t own a television set when our kids were very young. At times we worried someone might report this neglect to Child Protective Services. But since we didn’t have a TV, some kind soul had pity on our son Alden and gave him a broken remote control to add to the small collection of rocks and sticks his heartless parents had convinced him were actual toys.
Father James Alison has been at the forefront of mining philosopher René Girard’s fecund writings for theology. He preaches the Gospel of grace that flows from Jesus the Forgiving Victim, with the paradigm shift that entails for basic Christianity. He is also known for having firmly but gently faced down the dishonesty of his own Church on matters related to LGBT and lived to tell the tale. He has written numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Raising Abel. Alison travels worldwide as preacher and teacher, longing to help build up LGBT communities of faith and those who are not scandalized by them. He currently lives in Madrid, Spain.
Father James Alison has been at the forefront of mining philosopher René Girard’s fecund writings for theology. He preaches the Gospel of grace that flows from Jesus the Forgiving Victim, with the paradigm shift that entails for basic Christianity. He is also known for having firmly but gently faced down the dishonesty of his own Church on matters related to LGBT and lived to tell the tale. He has written numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Raising Abel. Alison travels worldwide as preacher and teacher, longing to help build up LGBT communities of faith and those who are not scandalized by them. He currently lives in Madrid, Spain.
Since childhood, “Pastor Sonia” of First Congregational Church has been an observer of and a voice for social justice. Her platforms have changed through the years, but never her intentionality or persistence. Sometimes she raises searing questions; sometimes she is moved to act. Walker’s compassion and respect for the journey of childhood guided her to many arenas: quality education for all children; easy access to nutritious food for families; arts exposure and engagement for children, youth and adults; opportunities for people of color when the word “equal” is not enough; and the ministry of reconciliation for all people.
Father James Alison has been at the forefront of mining philosopher René Girard’s fecund writings for theology. He preaches the Gospel of grace that flows from Jesus the Forgiving Victim, with the paradigm shift that entails for basic Christianity. He is also known for having firmly but gently faced down the dishonesty of his own Church on matters related to LGBT and lived to tell the tale. He has written numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Raising Abel. Alison travels worldwide as preacher and teacher, longing to help build up LGBT communities of faith and those who are not scandalized by them. He currently lives in Madrid, Spain.
"Thanks to memorizing John 3:16 at age 8, three years later I would understand something about my favorite professional wrestler, the notorious Stone Cold Steve Austin, that I wouldn’t have otherwise."
The Rev. Dr. Mark Jefferson, a homiletics professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, is an emerging scholar interested in the ways that consciousness and imagination inform preaching. His message is that Jesus came to confront our sinfulness, comfort us in our struggles, and also conform us into his image for the sake of our souls and for the future of creation. VTS is honoring its 200th anniversary on Oct. 15, 2023. As a contribution to this effort, Jefferson will preach 200 sermons locally, nationally, and internationally leading up to this bicentennial celebration. His love of people--especially his mother and grandmother--inspire him to preach with passion and purpose.
Obstacles abound in loving our neighbor; and understanding requires vulnerability, empathy, and courage. As an activist, Rabbi Judy Schindler is inspired by her relatives who resisted the Nazi regime. As a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Queens University, she is inspired by students who strive to build a better world rather than to pursue fancy job titles. As a rabbi and an author, she rejoices in the inspiration and power of words which can generate positive change. Schindler loves her immediate and extended families, which grow larger each day as she works toward overcoming obstacles to love.
Rabbi Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. “Torah” in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God’s unity. What inspires him most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000-year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God’s partner in healing a broken world.
The Rev. Meredith Day sits down with Rabbi Micah Greenstein and Rabbi Judy Schindler for a conversation about reconciliation, wilderness, and justice in the season of Lent.
Rabbi Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. “Torah” in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God’s unity. What inspires him most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000-year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God’s partner in healing a broken world.
We met Triff and Mary at the flower festival at St Mary’s Church in Topsham, a village in the southwest of England, which was identical to the image in your mind right now of a flower festival at St Mary’s Church in Topsham, in the southwest of England. Years ago Mary had seen their house, a place called Wixels, on holiday in Topsham while Triff was still a practicing architect in Norwich on the other side of England.
As executive director of the Memphis region of Facing History and Ourselves, Marti Tippens Murphy is inspired by the stories of upstanders: extraordinary people who embraced the challenge to speak out, stand up for others, and make difficult decisions. Together, they helped to create a more inclusive, just, and compassionate Memphis. She led the commissioning of the Upstanders in Memphis History Mural in downtown Memphis. A native Memphian and Rhodes College Alumna, Tippens Murphy’s love for history and the power of story-telling led her to the Los Angeles office of Facing History in 1997. Since returning to her hometown in 2014, Murphy and her team continue to use the lessons of history and empathy to empower youth to stand up to bigotry and hate.
Debbie Blue writes and preaches about the Bible’s seemingly endless capacity to reveal glimpses of God, what it is to be human, and things we might rather keep hidden. She loves rooting around in its stories (which often raise more questions than they answer) and in the layers of interpretation (which are often beautiful, sometimes hilarious, and occasionally terrible).
The outstretched hands of Tom Lee and the white man in the water, the outstretched hands of Jesus and Peter, are reminders that the story of our faith is God reaching out with hands of love to lift us up.
Being a child of the age, my morning newspaper ritual involves a cup of coffee and opening the Daily Memphian app on my phone. Which is where, on Wednesday, I saw that the final lineup for the Beale Street Music Festival had been announced.
Dear Jesus, son of Joseph, Congratulations on writing your first sermon and submitting it for publication here at Pulpit Press, Inc.
Getting a call late on Saturday afternoon to preach, I was relieved to remember that today we celebrate the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. It is a sweet story and one I need to hear. Though I don’t know about you, I expect you, as I do, feel the need of a story of hope and optimism, of promise and completion.
Peter was given a choice – a choice to do something different, a choice to follow and perhaps to help create a different way, a choice to go on an adventure that could change him and even change the world. Jesus gave Peter his first and only chance to go into the regions beyond.
Calvary Episcopal Church is a place where spiritual seekers can gather in a safe community of faith, questioning, learning, reflecting, and sharing diverse viewpoints.
Calvary Episcopal Church is a place where spiritual seekers can gather in a safe community of faith, questioning, learning, reflecting, and sharing diverse viewpoints.
Calvary Episcopal Church is a place where spiritual seekers can gather in a safe community of faith, questioning, learning, reflecting, and sharing diverse viewpoints.
The Rev. Amber Carswell: The Age to Come Might Be Near (11/10/19) by Calvary Episcopal Church
The Rev. Paul McLain: The Green, Green Grass of Home (9/29/19) by Calvary Episcopal Church
Rabbi Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. "Torah" in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God's unity. What inspires him most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000 year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God's partner in healing a broken world.
The Rev. Dan Matthews is a consistent favorite at Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. His preaching is inspired by powerful and meaningful stories, like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In light of these stories, Matthews pushes us to recognize when genuine blessings come our way. He believes that these moments of being “kissed by God” are more than being in the right place at the right time. His spiritual discipline of holy love is modeled after his mother’s ability to love with abandon. Each time he receives communion he is reminded of the transformative power of that love.
Brian McLaren passionately advocates for a “new kind of Christianity” --just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. In 1982, he helped form Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative, nondenominational church, well-known in the emerging church movement. His public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodern thought and culture, biblical studies, church leadership and formation, pastoral survival and burnout, inter-religious dialogue and global crises. McLaren is the author of A New Kind of Christianity, Naked Spirituality, and his most recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration.
A persistent, passionate question in the Rev. Buddy Stallings’ preaching and ministry has been how is it that modern people can and, in fact, do remain faithful to an ancient practice of the faith. Admitting that the church drives him nuts, particularly when it is especially certain, he also acknowledges that he can’t do without it. In the mystery of those two truths, which somehow live side by side, he finds enough, actually more than enough, to keep him on the search. After retiring as rector from St. Bartholomew’s, one of Manhattan’s most storied parishes, Stallings now spends about half the year in Memphis.
In In the Midst of the City: The Gospel and God’s Politics, the Very Rev. Barkley Thompson argues that Christian faith and politics are inseparable. Politics is, in Thompson’s words, “commentary and action that affect the polis…and the citizens for whom the polis is home.” To embody God’s politics we must first steep ourselves in God’s vision embodied in the Gospels, and only then can we act politically in the world. Thompson addresses hot-button social issues by putting this principle into practice, challenging the reader to live God’s politics and, as Thompson says, “to be the vanguard of God’s kingdom in the world.”
While in medical school, the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Robinson felt unequivocally called by the Lord to a bi-vocational synthesis of medicine and ministry: healing individuals, families and communities while joining God’s work to holistically “heal the land.” He is a systems-directed change agent: transforming urban churches into multi-faceted social, economic, and community development engines; delivering a more diversified physician workforce; catalyzing public health policies and practices; and, most recently, implementing a human services ecosystem that drives the dreams of persons in generational poverty and advances them toward economic prosperity. Robinson seeks to “walk worthy of the vocation to which he’s been called.”
Born in Memphis and a Roman Catholic priest for the Diocese of Memphis for 44 years, Msgr. Val Handwerker is presently pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church, located in the southern end of downtown. He is committed to urban ministry, and St. Patrick’s offers that vision, building upon its more than 150-year legacy at the same location. His preaching focuses on Jesus’ response to his first sermon in his hometown synagogue: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The challenge is to show how Jesus’ scripture is fulfilled now in the life of the church assembly and the people of God—right here in Memphis.
Dr. Diana Butler Bass writes and speaks widely on issues of spirituality, religion, culture and politics. Her work has appeared on NPR, PBS, Time and The New York Times. Her most recent book is Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks in which she offers suggestions for reclaiming gratitude that can lead to greater connection with God, our loved ones, our world, and even our souls. Butler Bass balances her professional work with an avid interest in Virginia politics, environmental issues, and Duke basketball.
Dr. Omid Safi is a leading Muslim public intellectual whose most recent book is Radical Love. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC and CNN. He leads an adult educational program focused on diverse spiritual traditions in Turkey and Morocco. Safi is devoted to the intersection of spirituality and social justice, and frequently writes on liberationist traditions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Rabbi Abraham Heschel. A devoted Muslim who seeks the path of Radical Love, Safi is committed to liberation for everyone, with love for all and harm for none.
Dr. Omid Safi is a leading Muslim public intellectual whose most recent book is Radical Love. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC and CNN. He leads an adult educational program focused on diverse spiritual traditions in Turkey and Morocco. Safi is devoted to the intersection of spirituality and social justice, and frequently writes on liberationist traditions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Rabbi Abraham Heschel. A devoted Muslim who seeks the path of Radical Love, Safi is committed to liberation for everyone, with love for all and harm for none.
Brian McLaren passionately advocates for a “new kind of Christianity” --just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. In 1982, he helped form Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative, nondenominational church, well-known in the emerging church movement. His public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodern thought and culture, biblical studies, church leadership and formation, pastoral survival and burnout, inter-religious dialogue and global crises. McLaren is the author of A New Kind of Christianity, Naked Spirituality, and his most recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration.
Kirk Whalum’s saxophone playing has been described as “soulful, passionate, and stirring.” His Memphis roots blend with the sounds of the Houston nightclub scene to create his unique take on the tenor sax. Whalum is also an ordained minister who produces a daily podcast, Bible in Your Ear. When not on tour, he serves on the faculty of the Visible Music College in Memphis.
The Torah begins with two very different accounts of creation. The first is a story of order, abundance, positivity, and equality. The second is a story of repair, lack, the intrusion of negative elements, and hierarchy. Dr. Marjorie Hass draws on both Rabbinic and philosophical sources to interpret these two stories and their lessons about the nature of the creative act. These lessons form the basis for a revitalized understanding of our responsibility for the creative acts we perform—not only as artists and leaders, but in our daily actions within our families, our workplaces, and our communities.
The many faithful who raised the Rev. Hester Mathes at Calvary, combined with years spent soaking in the wisdom of the Lenten Preaching Series, have provided an amazing springboard for an adventurous spiritual journey. Together, they challenge Mathes to break the Good News of God’s love out of the constraints of Sunday mornings. She hopes to continue to proclaim and explore the Gospel message in ways that launch it from the comfort of worship and study into an all-encompassing way of life.
Dr. Diana Butler Bass writes and speaks widely on issues of spirituality, religion, culture and politics. Her work has appeared on NPR, PBS, Time and The New York Times. Her most recent book is Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks in which she offers suggestions for reclaiming gratitude that can lead to greater connection with God, our loved ones, our world, and even our souls. Butler Bass balances her professional work with an avid interest in Virginia politics, environmental issues, and Duke basketball.
The Rev. Dan Matthews is a consistent favorite at Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. His preaching is inspired by powerful and meaningful stories, like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In light of these stories, Matthews pushes us to recognize when genuine blessings come our way. He believes that these moments of being “kissed by God” are more than being in the right place at the right time. His spiritual discipline of holy love is modeled after his mother’s ability to love with abandon. Each time he receives communion he is reminded of the transformative power of that love.
Rabbi Micah Greenstein loves Torah no matter where it comes from. "Torah" in a broad Jewish sense refers to the teachings and wisdom of Judaism, but he treasures insights on goodness, love, justice, shalom, and compassion from every faith tradition and every reflection of God's unity. What inspires him most about the Jewish legacy he lives and teaches is that it is not simply a tale of enduring persecution and surviving hate, but rather a 4,000 year-old joyful embrace of faith, family, and the blessing that comes with being God's partner in healing a broken world.
Lent is a time of reflection, inquiry, and prayer, as we prepare for the heartbreak of Good Friday and the resurrection joy of Easter. During the noon hour of the Lenten season, Calvary Church invites wise and inspiring preachers into our pulpit from places near and far (geographically, philosophically, and even temperamentally). People from across Memphis come to hear voices that may challenge, but also instruct, inspire, comfort and unite. The line-up of speakers changes annually, some are known locally, others have a national following, including the late Marcus Borg, Jon Sweeney, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Diana Butler Bass. We invite you to listen and learn along with us. And if you're in the Memphis area, you are always welcome at Calvary Episcopal Church.
The Rev. John Pitzer has always believed the Church should have an open door policy. In order to build a more inclusive church, he strives to make his preaching practical, engaging, welcoming, and passionate. For twenty years as a Dominican friar, Pitzer ministered here in Memphis and throughout the south. His passion for preaching and inclusivity now continues in the Episcopal Church, where he is an associate rector at Trinity Episcopal in New Orleans, Louisiana.
A prophetic voice to local parishioners and online listeners, the Rev. Dr. Stacy Spencer believes in the power of biblical teaching to transform lives. His multi-campus church ministers to spiritual needs, while his non-profit foundation provides scholarships to high school seniors. Spencer considers himself a change agent. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a figure both prophetic and pastoral, is his role model. Spencer’s favorite scripture is “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will
The Rev. Paul McLain: Resurrection is Not a Solo Event (5/12/19 by Calvary Episcopal Church
The Rev. Scott Walters: New Possibility for Fellowship (2/17/19) by Calvary Episcopal Church
The Rev. Scott Walters: Trusting our Belovedness (02/03/2019 by Calvary Episcopal Church