Near the end of his [Jesus'] life, he struggles with a complete embrace of his mission. "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me," he says, hoping that perhaps suffering is not what God intends (Matthew 26:39). But somehow he realizes, through prayer and...
The alligator--the chaos, the storm, the danger, the divorce, the illness, the crisis--and the human response--what you and I do in the midst of chaos--and the presence of God in chaos--these are profound issues of faith. And the stories about chaos and God and us are...
Here is a peeving, depressed preacher who is mad. God sent a little gourd to grow up and make shade over the preacher's head. He is so thrilled at that nice little, leafy plant. Then God sends a little cut worm like the one that cut off your tomato plant last spring....
The human race is, was, and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don't want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God and...
The dawn is an awakening to a deepening realization of who we really are in and with God and the world, and of what has been going on within us in the night. Always, and most important, the dawn is an awakening in love. Contemplatives of all traditions agree on one...
The truth that the cross of Christ embodies about us is certainly that we are loved by God, but that we are loved as prodigals, as problematic creatures, as beings whose alienation from God, from one another, from ourselves, and from the inarticulate creation is so...
We can either stay within the Christianity we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity...as a way of life, and then journey to reality, where God is present and living in every person, every...
If we seek a God we can handle, that will be exactly what we get: a God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we've cut down to size. Is there another way for us?
Do you understand why he upset them? I used to think the reason Jesus was crucified was because he picked a bad century. Now, it wouldn't make any difference. He could come to Louisville during this last decade of the 20th century and if he did the kind of preaching,...
Jesus experienced the silence of God in the company and companionship of his closest friends. Did they fail him? Yes, perhaps here more than anytime earlier in his ministry, but they did not fail him completely, at least not yet. They were with him--awake or asleep,...