Posts tagged with: Pentecost

Pentecost

This year I heard the readings differently: …there were dwelling in Jerusalem devout Jews from every nation under heaven… The reason the Church started as a multinational multiethnic beloved community is because we were born from a rich and diverse multinational multiethnic Judaism.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because...... Read More

Holy Fire

The Church turns its attention to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. But we cannot turn to the Jerusalem of scripture, history, and memory and neglect the Jerusalem of the present moment, or those living and dying within and beyond her walls and call ourselves Church, Christians, or followers of Jesus. For, though the...... Read More

Confessing Christ and Christian Anti-Semitism

What do you believe? What do you believe about Jesus? What do you believe about the scriptures that tell his story? What do you believe about the God he proclaimed with his life and death and what happened after his death? What do you believe happened after his death? What do you believe? We will...... Read More

Between Babel and Babble: Pentecost

Let us pray: Holy Spirit, transform us, our hearts and our homes, the Church and the world. Amen. The Church! The Church! The Church is on fire! We don’t need no water let the Holy Spirit burn! Pentecost is dramatic. It’s noisy. And it is Episcopalian. We are a Pentecostal church, but we tend to be...... Read More

Pentecost: Something Old, Something New

My farewell sermon at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. (I decided to publish this unchanged because I believe this is a fit word for today.) I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your daughters and your sons shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your elder men shall...... Read More

Rewriting the Bible, Me & the History Channel

I am a womanist, feminist, post-colonial, transgressive, progressive biblical scholar. I am liberal about the love of God and conservative about translation issues (like lexical fidelity). And I have been accused of rewriting the bible on more than one occasion, see Rewriting the Bible: the Gospel According to Liberals where I’m in good company. That is something...... Read More