In just a few short weeks, I’ll begin my new position at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. And…I…am…completely…and…totally…thrilled! When folks ask me about the job, they almost always ask, first, about the start date and then, second, about the commute. When I tell them it’s an hour drive door-to-door (with good traffic!), they almost immediately ask what I’m going to do with the time and I just as quickly answer, “Thank goodness for podcasts!” And it’s true. I love listening to podcasts. While many have commented that we’re in a new golden age of television – and I totally agree – I also think...

Here’s the simple but just a little troubling question I’ve been wrestling with since participating in Luther Seminary’s recent Rethinking Faith Formation conference: Given how many other groups and movements legitimately lay claim to our allegiance today, can the Church ever expect to exert the level of influence in our lives that it once did? Let me explain: in medieval times the Church was everything and everywhere – involved in politics, in control of the banks, the arbiter of salvation (or damnation), the final authority on all matters of domestic and public life. The omnipresence of the Church has been declining for...

What is the difference between love and acceptance? Between disease and personality? Between difference and identity? Andrew Solomon takes up these and other questions in this moving talk on the challenges that face parents of extraordinary children – extraordinarily different, bright, difficult, and more. But as you listen, you’ll realize he is speaking about all parents, all whose destiny is held captive by the fate and fortunes of their children. Based on the research and interviews he conducted for this remarkable book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, Solomon challenges us to reconsider the ideals we...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Have you ever noticed that it’s often in the most challenging times of life that we sense God’s presence most clearly? I’m not saying it should be this way. Or that God only appears when we most need God. Rather, I think that there’s just something about significant challenges and trials that clarify our priorities and cut through the manifold distractions of everyday life so that we may see God more clearly. I think that’s part of what’s going on in today’s Gospel reading. After feeding the thousands who followed him into the wilderness, Jesus commands the disciples to head across the sea without...

There is something both beautiful and sad about Barbara Crooker’s poem “Surfer Girl.” And it’s something beautiful and sad that I’ve experienced this past week at our cottage on Lake Otsego. Getting old, someone said, is not for sissies. And my siblings and I can testify to the truth of that statement as we live into the reality of being middle-aged. Water skiing – my substitute for Crooker’s surfing – didn’t hurt this much when I was half the age I am now. Nor did running…or sleeping on the less than perfect mattresses that furnish the cottage. And, quite frankly there are a lot of things like that. And so as I...