A church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a Word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, what kind of gospel is that? Preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed do not light up the world.
We all die eventually; we have no choice in the matter. But there are degrees of death before the final physical one. If we are honest, we acknowledge that we are dying throughout our life, and this is what we learn if we are attentive: grace is found at the depths...
When I was called here, I was charged with remaining politically neutral. And I've worked at that. Well let me tell you some things that are politically neutral-- * Encouraging you to not bear false-witness. That's politically neutral. You might want to fact-check to...
We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deep enough.
To call for two styles and to find impetus for the wintry sort of search demands boldness. It receives so little attention that anyone who defends it may well express the old reformers' anxiety: Am I alone right, and is the whole church wrong? Why in our era does the...
If you find out next week that you are terminally ill--and we're all terminally ill on this bus--what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
When we believe our church's purpose is to please us and make us happy, then we will withhold our money and withdraw our participation when we are displeased with our church. When we believe our church's purpose is to make us more like Jesus, we expect discomfort in...
Twenty-five years ago one of my mentors told me that the truth that I was loved all the way through was the “brute fact of the universe.” I am now just beginning to believe it. Christianity is a love affair beginning with the gasp of astonishment with which all love...