St Mary's In-The-Hills

Second Sunday of Easter | April 12, 2026

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:33:22 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Christ is Risen.

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:46:46 GMT

The Lord is Ris en Indeed.

Easter is not just a day, but a season, fifty days long, until Pentecost. During the Easter Season we use the acclamation: Alleluia! Christ is risen. And the response: The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! Christ is risen. That's an odd way of putting it, isn't it? We might say Christ has risen, right? Except we would miss something important if we did. In one of our Eucharistic prayers, we proclaim the mystery of faith: "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." Is that just a euphonic way of saying Christ died, then Christ rose, and we expect Christ to come again? It's not actually. Because when we say Christ is risen, we mean Christ is the Living One.

"It makes a big difference whether we think someone is dead or alive. To the person in either of those conditions it probably makes an even bigger difference. But it certainly also matters to anyone interested in that person." That's how biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson opens his book, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel . And so, he claims: "The most important question concerning Jesus, then, is simply this: Do we think he is dead or alive?" He goes on:

"If Jesus is simply dead, there are any number of ways in which we can relate ourselves to his life and his accomplishments. And we might even, if some obscure bit of data should turn up, hope to learn more about him. But we cannot reasonably expect to learn more from him.

"If he is alive, however, everything changes. It is not longer a matter of questioning a historical record, but a matter of our being put in question by one who has broken every rule of ordinary human existence. If Jesus lives, then it must be as life-giver. Jesus is not simply a figure of the past in that case, but a person in the present; not merely a memory that we can analyze and manipulate, but an agent who can confront and instruct us. What we learn about him must therefore include what we continue to learn from him."

What he says next goes to the heart of our Easter acclamation: "To be a Christian means to assert that Jesus is alive, is indeed life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45)." Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Throughout the Easter Season we make a point of reminding ourselves that to be Christian is to be called into life with Jesus, "being put in question by" the Living One. Although we may learn about who Jesus was and has been, we cannot leave Jesus simply in the past. Although we certainly can learn about Jesus in the Scriptures, Jesus is not confined to a page or bound in a book, no matter how inspired, truthful, or holy. Jesus is the Living One, alive in the world, alive in us, alive in God, and calling us to life, too.

If Jesus is risen indeed, then we are summoned into a life in which we do not just learn about Jesus, but we must learn from Jesus. Like any living partnership, any real life together, we must learn Jesus. Johnson helps us here, too. He reminds us that learning someone we love requires something of us. It takes trust and respect, attentiveness, especially in silence as we behold and meditate on one another. It takes time, and therefore patience, and even a bit of suffering. Above all, it takes creative fidelity. Even--especially--when the one we love changes. "Loyalty to what a person used to be is not creative fidelity. Loyalty to one's ideal image of the other is not creative fidelity. Not even loyalty to one's own first commitment of loyalty is creative fidelity. Creative fidelity is the willingness to trust, be attentive to, and suffer with the other even as the other changes." And that is certainly true of the life we are called into with the Living Jesus. We are summoned to trust, to be attentive to, and even to suffer with Jesus as he makes us new, as we learn what loving him requires of us.

Because the risen Jesus is full of surprises. You might remember the story in John 21, in which Jesus asks Peter three times, "Do you love me?" Each time Peter answers, each time more disturbed and insistently, that he does. And each time Jesus says, "Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs." And Jesus asks us the same question: Do you love me? If our answer is the same as Peter's--yes, Lord, you know I love you--then we are drawn into the life of the Living One, called to trust, to attend over time, to listen, and to adapt who we are for the sake of the one we love. And when we do, we will find Life filling us, and we will hear the task that he has for us at this time, in this place.

Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Pub Theology 4/7/26 -- Time to flip some tables?

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:21:41 GMT

After a longer hiatus than originally planned (due to travel, schedule conflicts, Holy Week, and Easter) we're are back! Just in time to talk about Jesus flipping tables,

The story from Matthew's Gospel is a familiar one. And it's part of the larger account of the events of Holy Week. In Matthew 21: 12-13, after his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus heads to the Temple where he ... makes a bit of a scene:

"The Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them 'It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a den of robbers." John's Gospel adds the detail of Jesus using his belt as a whip to drive the merchants, money changers, and the sacrificial livestock from the premises. In Mark and Luke, Jesus accuses the Temple authorities of thievery and preying upon the poor who were forced to purchase doves for sacrifice since they couldn't afford lambs.

A little historical context is helpful here. Scholars tend to agree that the selling of animals was commonplace for the purpose of making sacrifice, and that the money changers were present to convert the variety of currencies in circulation to the accepted currency for paying Temple taxes. Some analysis suggests that Jesus' act was triggered by the money changers' routine cheating of their customers. Others suggest the Temple establishment sided with the aristocracy and Roman authorities by lending funds from the Temple treasury to the poor who were in danger of losing their land to debt, thus saddling them with an unsustainable burden that had the effect of concentrating even more wealth in the hands of the elite. Finally, there is some speculation that this was the act that precipitated Jesus' arrest and eventual crucifixion. Given that the Gospels all place it in the Holy Week narrative, this seems plausible. In short, this may have been the final straw for the Temple authorities.

So what do you think about all this? Is this really the reason for Jesus' persecution and execution? Because he disrupted the "economic model" of the Temple? In other words, what is the meaning of this scene? How do you think it fits into the Gospel narrative, not just of Holy Week, but the whole trajectory of Jesus' ministry? And what lessons do you take away from this episode? A popular sign popped up at the recent "No Kings" protests that took place around the country a few weekends ago: "Don't Sit at Tables Jesus Would Have Flipped." What would those tables be today?

We're going to talk all about flipping tables in our conversation this week. Join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday April 7, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. But please refrain from flipping the tables there. We want them to keep inviting us back.

Easter Sunday | April 5, 2026

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 01:14:02 GMT

Easter Vigil

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:37:54 GMT

Join us for the Great Vigil of Easter, in person or by livestream.

Good Friday | April 3, 2026

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:12:28 GMT

Join us for our 7 p.m. Go od Friday service, in person, or by livestream.

Maundy Thursday | April 2, 2026

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:10:10 GMT

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The livestream of our Maundy Thursday service.

The Heart of the Mystery

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:56:12 GMT

A Word from Hans Urs von Balthasar

Last week I mentioned the great twentieth-century Swiss Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. This week, let me offer you a meditation by Balthasar on the Cross and the Heart of Jesus. Very fitting for Good Friday or Holy Saturday reading, which beautifully draws together of many of the threads of Holy Week and the Triduum.

___

The very form of the Cross, extending out into the four winds, always told the ancient Church that the Cross means solidarity: its outstretched arms would gladly embrace the universe. According to the Didache, the Cross is semeion epektaseos , a “sign of expansion,” and only God himself can have such a wide reach: “On the Cross God stretched out his hands to encompass the bounds of the universe” (Cyril of Jerusalem). “In his suffering God stretched out his arms and embraced the world, thus prefiguring the coming of a people which would, from East to West, gather under his wings” (Lactantius). “O blessed Wood on which God was stretched out!” (Sibylline Oracles).

But God can do this only as a man, and his form is different from that of the animals in that “he can stand up straight and spread out his hands” (Justin). And thus it is that he can reach out to the two peoples, represented by the two thieves, and tear down the wall of division (Athanasius). Even in its outward form the Cross is all-inclusive.

But its interior inclusiveness is shown by the opened Heart, out of which the last drops of Jesus’ substance are poured: blood and water, the sacraments of the Church. Both Biblically and philosophically (in the total human context, that is), the heart is conceived to be the real center of spiritual and corporeal man, and, by analogy, it is also seen as the very center of God as he opens himself up to man (I Sam. 13, 14).

In the Old Testament, the heart is still largely understood as the seat of spiritual energy and of thought, while the bosom or “bowels” (as in “bowels of mercy”) are rather taken to be the seat of the affections.

In the New Testament, however, both aspects coincide with the concept of “heart.” Having one’s “whole heart” turned to God means the opening of the whole man towards him (Acts 8,37; Mt. 22,37). Thus, the heart that was hardened (Mk.10,5, following numerous parallels in the Old Testament) must be renewed: from a stony heart it must become a heart of flesh (Ez. 11,19, etc.; cf 2 Cor. 3,3).

In the wake of Homer, Greek philosophy saw in the heart the center of psychic and spiritual life: for Stoicism, the heart is the seat of the hegemonikon, the guiding faculty in man. Going beyond this, New Testament theology adds, on the one hand, an incarnational element. The soul is wholly incarnate in the heart, and, in the heart, the body wholly becomes the medium for the expression of the soul.

At the same time, the New Testament adds an element of personhood: it is first in Christianity that the entire man – body and soul – becomes a unique person through God’s call and, with his heart, orients towards God this uniqueness that is his.

The narrative of the piercing with the spear and of the outpouring of blood and water should be read as being continuous with the Johannine symbolism of water, spirit and blood, to which also belong the references to “thirst”.

Earthly water again makes thirsty, but Jesus’ water quenches thirst forever (4,13f). “Let whoever is thirsty come to me and drink as one believing in me” (7,37f); thus the believer’s thirst is quenched forever (6,35). Related to this is the extraordinary promise that, in him who drinks it, Jesus’ water would become a fountain leaping up to life eternal (4,14), which is supported by the verse of Scripture: “Streams of living water will spring from his belly” (koilia: 7, 38).

It is at the moment when Jesus suffers the most absolute thirst that he dissolves, to become an eternal fountain. That verse may refer to the ever-present analogy between water and word/spirit (Jesus’ words are “spirit and life”). Even better, it may be related to the “fountain” in Ezechiel’s new temple (Ez. 47; cf Zach. 13,1), with which Jesus compared his own body (2,2t).

In the context of John’s general symbolism, there can be no doubt that in the outpouring of blood and water the evangelist saw the institution of the sacraments of eucharist and baptism (cf Cana: 2, lff.; the unity of water and spirit: 3,5; and of water, spirit and blood; 1 Jn. 5,6, with explicit reference to “Jesus Christ: “he it is that has come by water and blood”).

The opening of the Heart is the handing over of what is most intimate and personal for the use of all. All may enter the open, emptied space. Moreover, official proof had to be provided that the separation of flesh and blood had been realized to the full as a prerequisite for the form of the eucharistic meal. Both the (new) temple and the newly opened fountain where all may drink point to community. The surrendered Body is the locus where the new covenant is established, where the new community assembles. It is at once space, altar, sacrifice, meal, the community and its spirit.

+ From the Preface to Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Heart of the World .

Pondering Glory

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 23:37:54 GMT

What does glory look like?

When I was young, maybe eight or ten, I remember sitting on the cold concrete floor of our basement, and leafing through the illustrated children's Bible my aunt and uncle--my godparents--had given me for my baptism when I was an infant. I remember pondering two illustrated scenes (they've melded in my memory into one, but they're two images). The two images are evocative, depictions of glory from the Elder Testament.

The first scene is the assumption of Elijah into heaven on a heavenly chariot ( 2 Kings 2:1-18 ). An orange glow floods the page, deepening to red in the form of two horses and a chariot. The figure of Elijah standing in the chariot, dressed in white robes, punctuates the color burning off the page. Below them is the overwhelmed Elisha, undoubtedly as he is about to cry out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”

The second scene is the appearance of the Merkavah, the Divine chariot-throne to Ezekiel by the River Chebar ( Ezekiel 1 ). Ezekiel has fallen down at the bottom of the page on the grass and stones, barely able to raise his eyes to the manifestation above him: on a background of deep blue, a bright white, complex figure of wings and wheels, with different faces at the head and ethereal flames rising from the center, illumines Ezekiel's back.

Both of these are images of glory. The first of the glorification of Elijah, the second of Ezekiel's coming face to face with the glory of God, the Kavod Adonai . Later Jewish mystical and Rabbinic speculation will name this glory of God present in the world the Shekinah. I was fascinated by these stories, by stories of God's glory breaking into the mundane, cracking open our day-to-day expectations, bursting our assumptions and certainties. It's no wonder that I have devoted much of my scholarly career to the book of Revelation and other related writings that ponder the glory of God. No wonder I was attracted to the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose work on theological aesthetics, on the beauty that undergirds all that is, is entitled Herrlichkeit , or in English, The Glory of the Lord . Balthasar aligned Glory and Beauty. At its heart, what we call beauty is a sacrament of the Glory of God.

Fyodor Dostoevsky tried to write about beauty. The tragic protagonist of his novel The Idiot, Prince Myshkin, is something like Dostoevsky's attempt to write a perfectly beautiful human being, a Christ, in flesh and human psyche, as it were. Myshkin fits uncomfortably with the socialites into whose company he has been thrust. His simplicity unnerves and bewilders them. It is one such socialite, Ippolit, who utters one of the better known phrases of Dostoevsky's writings: "'Is it true, Prince, that you once said "beauty" would save the world? Gentlemen,' he cried loudly to them all, 'the prince insists that beauty will save the world!'" Beauty will save the world. Or rather, Glory will save the world.

But where do we find glory? It is tempting to find glory in what knocks us on our faces, blinds us with its overwhelming and extraordinary shine. It is tempting to identify glory with raw power, with strength, even peace through strength. It is tempting to align glory with extreme happiness and delight, emotional elation and dopamine overload. It is tempting to displace God by such glory. But these are temptations, because although God's glory does indeed burst out of the heavens in these two stories, in both they are shrouded in the cloud of the invisible, in mystery and wonder. And they are temptations because the Younger Testament draws out another theme, another site of God's glory.

The early Christians and writers of the New Testament latched onto the song of the Suffering Servant from Isaiah 53 :

Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Matthew 8:17 quotes Isaiah 53:4: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." 1 Peter 2:24 uses Isaiah 53:5 to interpret Jesus on the cross: "He himself bore or sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed."

There would appear to be no glory in the figure of Christ on the cross. Christ on the cross would seem to be the opposite of glory: "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him."

In John 12, Jesus is in the middle of praying, and he says: “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” John continues: "Then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.' The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, 'An angel has spoken to him.' Jesus answered, 'This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.' He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die."

In the Gospel according to Mark (10:35-40) James and John make a request of Jesus: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus asks what they want him to do, and they ask “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus tells them they don't know what they are asking: "to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to appoint, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” As it turns out, in Mark 15:27 we discover for whom it has been prepared: "It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' And with him they crucified two rebels, one on his right and one on his left." Jesus, in his glory, is Jesus on the Cross.

This is one of the upheavals of Christianity--God's glory does not reside simply in the blinding light of splendor, but powerfully in the ugliness of the cross. The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth put it this way: "If we seek Christ's beauty in a glory which is not that of the Crucified, we are doomed to seek in vain. ...In this self-revelation, God's beauty embraces death as well as life, fear as well as joy, what we call 'ugly' as well as what we call 'beautiful.'" As Balthasar says,

Our task...consists in coming, with John, to see his 'formlessness' as a mode of his glory because of mode of his love to the end, to discover in his deformity (Ungestalt) the mystery of transcendental form (Ubergestalt). His bearing of the world's sin (John 1:29), his being made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) is understandable only as a function of the glory of love, before and after and therefore, also during his descent into darkness: what we have before us is pure glory, and even though it is really a concealment and really an entering into darkness.

When Dostoevsky raised the idea that beauty would save the world, he was deeply influenced by an experience he had in 1867 of viewing Hans Holbein's "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb."

Dostoevsky was fascinated by this painting. This was the beauty that Dostoevsky thought would save the world, the beauty of the "idiot" Prince Myshkin, the beauty of Christ in the tomb, the beauty of God's love for us in the depths of our experience. This, Dostoevsky thought, is glory.

This Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the climax of which is Crucifixion of Jesus. The death of Jesus--if we may so speak, the death of God in the death of Jesus--is a great mystery, and Palm Sunday ends by meditating on the Cross. The mystery is that God's glory breaks out of the ugliness of this death, of this execution. The mystery is that here is glory, because here is the intensity, the gravity, the overwhelming weight of God's love for the world. The Cross, like this painting, shows us that "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." And yet, it is precisely in the ugliness of this One's death that glory shines on us, that we are made beautiful. As the hymn says, "My song is love unknown, my Savior's love for me--love to the loveless shown that they may lovely be. But who am I, that for my sake, my Lord should take frail flesh and die."

As we approach Holy Week, may you find in the midst of the ugliness of the world the immensity of God's love, may you find in the Crucified One the glory of God.

Palm Sunday | March 29, 2026

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:46:33 GMT

Fifth Sunday in Lent | March 21, 2026

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 23:16:25 GMT

Wait for the Lord

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:36:36 GMT

Exercising patience.

The Psalms are a gift to the church and to the life of prayer. It is true that there's plenty of desire for retribution voiced in the Psalms, so one should not pray or read them unreflectively. But there are among the psalms some that magisterially give voice to the cry of our hearts. The Psalm for this week is one such psalm: De profundis clamo ad te Domine , Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. I do not think I've yet met anyone who has not cried out to God out of the depths. Like the book of Job, this Psalm invites us to pour out our hearts to God directly, honestly.

The Psalm reads:

1 Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.

2 If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, *
O Lord, who could stand?

3 For there is forgiveness with you; *
therefore you shall be feared.

4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; *
in his word is my hope.

5 My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, *
more than watchmen for the morning.

6 O Israel, wait for the Lord, *
for with the Lord there is mercy;

7 With him there is plenteous redemption, *
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

Notice, though, that the Psalm turns from one of crying out to God, for with God there is forgiveness, to the theme of waiting. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him;" "my soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning," and to emphasize the point, the line is repeated, "more than watchmen for the morning." We cast our eyes to the horizon, waiting with the desperation and determination of watchmen whose hope is only to make it to the breaking of the light, in which there is safety, in which there is salvation. And the Psalm ends with an exhortation: "O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy; with him there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins."

As we pray this Psalm, we place ourselves in the place of Israel--not the modern nation state, but Israel, God's own people, and we hear ourselves tell ourselves to wait for the Lord.

And when we are in the depths, what does it mean to wait? It is tempting to think of waiting as a merely passive thing--just biding time, until something changes, until something happens. But true waiting, true patience is more like endurance.

Charles Mathewes, in his book A Theology of Public Life , invites us to consider what it means to live as followers of Christ "during the world." He spots the phrase in the will of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who established a chapel with his estate, "that there be said every day, during the Worlde...three masses." Mathewes uses the phrase to talk about the world not so much as a place, but as an era, and our place within it not a place, but a duration, a time. But we are already late: "We are, in the most profound way, belated ; everything important to our fates--our sin and our salvation--has already occurred, or at least (in the latter case) has been inaugurated, if not fully accomplished. ...We should understand the world as something fundamentally must endure--not an absolute and unquestioned 'given,' but rather a contingent configuration of reality that will one day pass away." "This," he concludes, "is what the phrase 'during the world' is meant to bring to the fore. It suggests a period, episode, or era--a non-permanent condition, but one inescapable, for now--in which we find ourselves, and which we must live through."

If that's right, to live "during the world" is to wait for the Lord, even as we cry out to God out of the depths. In the book we've been discussing on Wednesdays, Hanna Reichel's For Such a Time as This , Reichel urges that in the Psalms "wait for the Lord" "does not mean 'be inactive,'" but rather, "'do not take revenge.'" It is "a reminder to bind ourselves to God's work of justice. 'Wait for God' means to watch out for God's action in history and participate in it. Not inaction or surrender, but a renewed commitment."

When we find ourselves in despair, in confusion and in the midst of what feels like chaos, we can give in to the discord and get lost in the static, or we can wait for the Lord, turn our eyes, our hearts, our ears not to the loudest voices and the most disturbing, but to the still, small voice, the sound of sheer silence, that echoes in our very souls. We can wait for the Lord, committing ourselves to being God's people, not our own people. We turn in prayer, we turn in contemplation, we turn in song, we turn in acts of mercy and compassion that mirror, however imperfectly, the love, mercy, and compassion of our God.

In the Stephen Schwartz musical, Children of Eden , Cain sings of being lost in the wilderness: And now we're lost in wilderness / Lost,crying in the wilderness / And if anyone's watching it seems they couldn't care less / We're lost wilderness. But by the end of the song, even Cain can look forward in hope: And where we are headed boy, I couldn't guess but / Off we go without a warning / Running as we hit the ground \ Where our future lies a-borning / Where our hearts are outward bound / Till one bright and distant morning / We may stop and look around / And there in the wilderness / Finally we'll be found!

If we find ourselves in the depths, our task is to cry out to God, and to wait for the Lord. When we are in the depths, we recommit ourselves to the one who holds us, during the world, until one bright and distant morning, we may stop and look around, and there in the depths, finally we'll be found!

"The Jews"

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:52:51 GMT

How do we talk about our Jewish neighbors?

On Thursday, our kids' school was on lockdown, as a precaution, because in neighboring West Bloomfield a man drove a truck into a synagogue with a loaded weapon. The truck did damage as it made its way into the complex, and the building caught fire. The assailant was shot and killed by a security guard. One guard was hit by the truck but is expected to recover. Multiple first responders were treated for smoke inhalation. It could have been much worse than it was. But it should make us take a close look at how we talk about our Jewish neighbors, and how we hear our Scriptures talking about "the Jews."

It seems as though the assailant at Beth Israel was a Lebanese-born American citizen who lost family in the recent Israeli-American bombings in Lebanon. We will likely never know what went through his head. But the costs of war are more than dollars spent on munitions, property destruction, and lives lost. The deeper cost of war is the tearing apart of who we are as a people, as human beings and communities. Violence breeds violence because when violence touches those we love, inconsolable grief has the capacity to push any one of us to return violence for violence. That seems to be what has happened here. As Ghandi is supposed to have said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." At some point, we must reckon with the fact that our bombs and Israel's bombs invited this man to murder.

Still, this man chose violence. We cannot condone it, but we can try to understand it. He did not try to tear down the American or Israeli states; he was powerless against those powers. So he focused his rage on this particular synagogue. His wrath was, to say the least, misdirected. The people of Beth Israel did not drop bombs on Lebanon. And even if they support the state of Israel, they are not the perpetrators of the violence that took his family. But his desire for justice--for vengeance rather--got caught up in a larger pool of contempt: the fear and resentment of the Jewish people, the sway of Antisemitism. Antisemitism is a peculiar disease of our world, and through its strange logic real grievances against the Israeli state turn to the hatred of all Jews.

Jews were always somewhat distrusted in antiquity. The Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. and Babylon destroyed the southern kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The Babylonians took a number of the elite Judeans into captivity, into exile. Much of our Bible was collected and shaped by this experience of trauma, violence, and exile. The Jews gained some modicum of respect and autonomy under the Romans (though always under the hand of Caesar), but they always lived as resident aliens, as a wandering people. But the fortunes and fate of the Jews shifted decisively once Christianity came to imperial power, beginning in the fourth century A.D. From that point on Christian charity towards the Jewish people has been light on the ground. Christians have done more to rend and destroy Jewish communities and lives than anyone else. Christians have claimed, throughout the centuries, sometimes more softly, sometimes more vigorously (and violently), that Christianity replaced Judaism, that the Church replaced the Temple and Synagogue, that because Jews are Christ-killers, they have been abandoned by God and deserve to be punished. But all of these claims are, frankly, heretical. So, w hy has anti-Judaism and anti-Semitic "replacement theology" festered and spread among Christians?

There's no easy answer, except that violence breeds violence. When Christianity began it was entirely Jewish. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus's first followers were Jews. The earliest apostles were Jews. Paul was a Jew. They all prayed to the God of Israel, the one Jesus called Father. The Scriptures were the Jewish Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament). In its beginnings, Christianity was a kind of Judaism. (Arguably, it still is, but that's a conversation for another time.) But devotion to Christ took hold not primarily among Jewish communities, but among non-Jewish (or Gentile) communities. Through a difficult process, early Christians found themselves separated from their Jewish kin, even excluded from the synagogues and other Jewish places of prayer. They were left exposed to the whims of their (often uncharitable neighbors). And the pain of that exclusion and separation, and undoubted violence, left a mark on the early Christians writings that are now in our New Testament.

This is especially true of the Gospels of Matthew and John--which brings us to the season ahead of us and our responsibility to understand what our Scriptures are saying. In the Gospel lessons from John and the Passion narrative of Matthew are infamous texts that have been used to foment violence against our Jewish neighbors, and yet we regularly read them in Lent and Holy Week. John constantly talks about "the Jews" as a group opposed to Jesus. The Gospel lesson for this Sunday uses this language--"The Jews did not believe that he had been blind...; His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue" (John 9:18, 22). This verse is a mirror of the situation of Christians in the late first century--they were apparently being turned out of the synagogues. Paul seems to indicate such things might have been done with some violence. But clearly by using this language John paints with a broad brush. Surely, he means something like the Judean leaders. And yet, he says merely "the Jews." Much as the assailant at Temple Israel, John has drawn under one category and condemnation those who were guilty and those who were not. In doing so, he left later generations of Christians a legacy of legitimating hatred of Jewish people in general.

Matthew is in some ways better, but includes one disturbing line, which we usually voice as a congregation on Palm Sunday. When Pilate decides to crucify Jesus, in Matthew's Gospel he says, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." Matthew continues: "Then the people as a whole answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:24-25). This is where the "blood libel" finds its justification. It is entirely appropriate for all the people in the congregation to voice this response. Unfortunately, for most of the history of Christianity, this verse has been taken not to be an admission of the guilt of all of us, but of the Jews. Christians have taken this verse as justification for punishing the Jews and their progeny.

So, what do we do with all of this? Paul has some insight:"I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew" (Romans 11:1-2). He goes on: "I want you to understand this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not claim to be wiser than you are: a hardening has come upon part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, 'Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.' 'And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.' As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their ancestors, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:25-29).

The Jewish people are God's people, and we have been grafted into the covenant God has made with them. There is no blanket condemnation of the Jews; they have not been replaced as God's chosen people. The painful separation of the early Christians from the Jewish community left its mark on the Christian story, and we have much to atone for. We must resist the notion that our Scriptures condemn the Jewish people in perpetuity. We must understand our own fear and grief lest we find ourselves enslaved to our bitterness, to our contempt, to violence.

This can be for us a lesson in what God's kingdom looks like. It is not a kingdom that counsels condemnation, but reconciliation. It is not a kingdom maintained through violence, but through sacrifice and long-suffering love. It is not a kingdom that pushes out and holds down our fellow humans, but one in which the poor, the lowly, the grieving, bruised, and beaten are raised to new life, restored to wholeness, and the mighty ones are brought down to their knees to serve and heal. May we hold onto this vision of God's kingdom until we find that we have no more enemies, until we find that we have awoken in the peace of God.

And as we walk through the rest of Lent and Holy Week, let us hold these lessons close to our hearts so that we might even reckon with our own complicity and so perhaps find forgiveness and healing. Let us pray for the peace of all God's children. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

Pub Theology 3/10/26 -- Tempus Fugit

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:11:39 GMT

We turned our clocks ahead this past weekend, bringing with it the unwelcome loss of an hour's sleep, time we won't get back again until the fall when we'll reset our clocks all over again. I don't know about you, but for me the extra daylight after the dinner hour doesn't compensate for the misery of waking up in pitch blackness as if we were still in the deepest depths of winter.

The twice-yearly ritual of resetting our clocks from standard time to daylight savings time and back again is a reminder that time is fleeting, or as the Roman poet and author Virgil put it, Tempus Fugit , literally time flies. Virgil's original version of this now common phrase emphasized the idea that time irretrievably escapes us. When it's gone, it's gone. This is very different than the line uttered by Matthew McConaughey's character Rust Cohle in the first season of HBO's series True Detective: "Tine is a flat circle."

If you're like me, you may have wondered where that phrase came from, and what it means. But thanks to the miracle of modern Internet sleuthing , we've got an answer. It's a reference to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "eternal recurrence," In short, the idea that because time is endless, everything will eventually repeat itself. That includes your own life, which you will relive in exactly the same way, an infinite number of times, for all eternity. This may sound like a nightmare to you, but Nietzsche saw it as a cause for celebration, assuming you made your life into something you'd want to repeat an infinitely.

What this is all getting at is the topic we're going to talk about in our conversation this week -- our perception of and relationship with time. And we'll start simply, with daylight savings time, and dig deeper from there. Which do you subscribe to more, Virgil's idea of time as irretrievably escaping, or Rust Cohle's short-hand Nietzsche of time as eternally recurring? If you had one more hour in your day, 25 rather than 24, how would you use that extra time? What if you knew you could have one more day, or week, or month, or year of life than what you were expecting? What would you do with that? Would you live that bonus time any differently than your everyday?

Come spend some quality time with us this Tuesday, March 10, and join the conversation. Discussion starts tomorrow evening at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Third Sunday in Lent | March 8, 2026

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:21:02 GMT

Living With Uncertainty

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:20:16 GMT

What do we do when we don't know what to do?

On Sunday, I shared a quote by Thomas Merton, which he ends with this stunning statement: "Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance." To join the general dance, which is God's own dance and music and delight. "For the world and time" Merton says, "are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast." He sounds pretty assured of all of this. In his work, New Seeds of Contemplation, he talks about what contemplation is: "Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder." Lovely. But what if we're not all saints who feel this spiritual wonder? What if some of us mere mortals have more doubts, more uncertainty than all of that?

As it turns out, Merton was no cheery optimist. His love of contemplation grew out of his practice, and that practice was not one of certainty:

For contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and faith aspire, by their very nature, because without it they must always remain incomplete. Yet contemplation is not vision because it sees "without seeing" and knows "without knowing." It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words or even in clear concepts. It can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said, and denies what it has affirmed. For in contemplation we know by "unknowing." Or, better, we know beyond all knowing or "unknowing."

For Merton, the art of contemplation, of breathing in and breathing out God, takes place not in the absence of uncertainty and unknowing, but precisely in the midst of uncertainty and unknowing. In his Thoughts in Solitude , Merton wrote about his profound uncertainty in how God was calling to him:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

People usually tack on an "Amen" at the end and call it Merton's Prayer of Uncertainty. But there's no Amen in the text itself. It's not really a formal prayer; it's just Merton speaking honestly to God with us in earshot. And it may be a prayer you find helpful and want to keep close at hand (it's one of those I keep on a clipping in my prayer book). Here Merton recognizes how much uncertainty we carry with us, if we're honest, and that God is with us precisely in that uncertainty.

As we continue our Lenten journey, let me give you permission to be uncertain. Our world would be a lovelier place, I truly believe, if more of us enjoyed our own uncertainty. There is a lot in the world that threatens to overwhelm us with the confusion and uncertainty of it all. But instead of trying to conquer it, Merton might ask us rather to sink into it, to feel our powerlessness before it all, so that God's own heart and power can come more solidly into view.

And that's what Merton means when he says we are invited "to forget ourselves on purpose," to "cast our awful solemnity to the winds." To overcome our uncertainty, we need to become less certain. "The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life," Merton writes, "the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own"--in other words, the more we try to muscle our way past our uncertainty--"the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair." It is our need for certainty that keeps us tethered to the idols that threaten to swallow us in an abyss of anxiety, sadness, absurdity, and despair--and usually those are idols of our own competence and self-sufficiency.

This same uncertainty hounded Dietrich Bonhoeffer, too. During his imprisonment by the Nazis, before he was killed for his allegiance to Jesus over the Fuehrer, Bonhoeffer wrote a moving poem (in his Letters and Papers from Prison ), "Who am I?" The poem begins with observations those around him were making--about his cheerfulness and his charisma, his faith and his outward assurance. But he's not so certain:

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

They mock us, these lonely questions of ours. But as Bonhoeffer sinks into his uncertainty, it's not despair that catches him. The same is true of Merton. Even when we begin to slide from uncertainty to despair, he says, "it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not."

Uncertainty is not a flaw, not a bug in our design, but a feature. Our compulsive need for certainty is the flaw. Our need to be omni-competent, masters of our domain, masters even of our own selves--that's the flaw, because mastery is always illusory.

Do you find yourself uncertain how to walk through these days? Like walking through the thick fog that falls heavy around us today? Just as we find by walking through the fog that we see enough of the road ahead of us even if we cannot see it's end, and so we trust that we are walking in the right direction, so too we walk through our lives and uncertain times, trusting that by putting one foot after another, doing the next right thing as far as we can see--that by doing that, "even though we may know nothing about it," we may yet find the good road.

Second Sunday in Lent | March 1, 2026

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 12:53:14 GMT

Living Faithfully, Acting Bravely

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:04:51 GMT

Reflecting on Seven Years

Seven is one of those biblical numbers. Common wisdom has it that seven represents completion, perfection. But sometimes seven is just a mid-way point. In Genesis 29, Jacob meets his future wife. Well, he meets one of them. Jacob has traveled a long way and he comes to a well, where shepherds were watering their flocks. He tells some of those gathered he's looking for his cousin Laban, and lo and behold, Laban's daughter Rachel arrives with a flock. Hearing that this is the daughter of Laban, Jacob waters the flock. Laban hears about it and runs to greet his cousin, who had done this good deed for him. When Laban asks what sort of payment he'd be willing to take, Jacob, because he is smitten with Rachel, offers to work for Laban for seven years for her hand in marriage. At the end of seven years Laban tricks Jacob into marrying his older daughter Leah. When Jacob confronts him, Laban agrees to give him Rachel's hand, too, in exchange for another seven years of work.

All of that to say, sometimes seven is completion, sometimes, it's just in the middle.

This week marks the seventh anniversary since I came to St. Mary's In-The-Hills, so I've been looking back and reflecting on how far we've come together.

Our Vestry met for a retreat on Saturday, and we talked a bit about what it means to live bravely--as a community. We talked about what it might look like for St. Mary's to live our faith more bravely. We studied and discussed together Deuteronomy 10:12-13, 17-21 , about what God requires of us, what it means to "fear" God, how to love God and keep the commandments of our God, "the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing." We discussed what God might be calling us to: "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." What does it mean to live faithfully? What does it mean to act bravely? What does it mean to be God's people?

We listened to a re-enactment of the last speech of John Brown . We watched the video over 150 Episcopal bishops put out a few weeks ago, reminding us that in our baptismal vows we take an oath to respect the dignity of every human being. And we asked ourselves what bravery might look like.

As I look back at the seven years I have served at St. Mary's, I can see how we've grown from a welcoming space into a safe space. And how we've begun to grow from a safe space to a brave space. It's time for us to ask how we learn to live together bravely, how we grow from a brave space, to a brave community, a fellowship of Christians acting bravely in the world.

We don't have all the answers yet, but the Vestry will continue to discuss all of these things, and we will look together for ways to live faithfully and act bravely in our community, to love our neighbor bravely, to love the stranger bravely.

Seven years has not brought us to perfection, but to what feels like a middle. To me, it feels like we are at a fulcrum in our life together, and I am excited to see what's next! I hope and pray that the next seven years continues to find us faithful, full of hope, and learning how to love bravely.

Pub Theology 2/24/26 -- It's an illusion

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:11:00 GMT

We're building our conversation this week around the above quote, that has widely been attributed to English modernist writer and feminist pioneer Virginia Woolf. Before you ask, yes, we are aware that some of Woolf's views, especially on race and class, would make her persona non grata in certain circles today. But that said, the quote is worth thinking about.

In some ways it is reminiscent of a quote from C.S. Lewis that was the focus of one of our conversations some eight years ago. Lewis said: "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." What both writers seem to be pointing to is the obvious truth that as we age we grow and change. Including our views, our ideas of how the world works, our preconceived notions of ourselves and others. And sometimes that change will feel like loss. What takes the place of those things we've lost? For Woolf, it's other illusions.

This brings us back to Woolf's quote. What do you think she is getting at here? Are there illusions that you've had to lose as you've grown older and (hopefully) wiser? What might those be for you? And what about the other half of the quote? What kind of new illusions have we acquired as we've shed others? Finally, are there "comforting illusions" that you still cling to? And to make it a little provocative, is your faith one of them?

Come help us sort it all out tomorrow evening. Join us for the discussion Tuesday, Feb. 24 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

First Sunday in Lent | February 22, 2026

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:31:38 GMT

Ashes and Honesty

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:06:40 GMT

This is us.

Ashes are hard to clean off. Maybe you noticed that if you attended an Ash Wednesday service. The ashes sink into the pores of our skin, mingled with the sanctifying oil. I have to have lemons handy to clean off the ashes before I handle the Eucharistic bread. Even then, the stain of the ashes lingers around the edges. And I think this is a good thing. It reminds us that the frailty we confess on Ash Wednesday, the confession that we make, and the promises we adopt linger with us, too. It reminds us that we are not just dust today, but that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. The ashes are an honest confession of who we are, an embodied sign of our commitment to see ourselves truthfully.

This honesty about ourselves, the ashes of Ash Wednesday, is just the beginning of our process of renewal, conversion, transformation. But don't just take my word for it. On Wednesday, both Pope Leo and Sean Rowe, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, gave impassioned Ash Wednesday reflections. Pope Leo's came in the form of a sermon . Presiding Bishop Rowe's in a letter . Both were stirring reflections on what the ashes that stick to us can tell us about our path as disciples of Jesus.

Leo reminded those listening of the need we have to gather as people of Christ, people of peace, a people who recognize their sins:

Even today, Lent remains a powerful time for community: “Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation” (Joel 2:16). We know that it has become increasingly difficult to gather people together and make them feel like a community — not in a nationalistic and aggressive way, but in a communion where each of us finds our place. Indeed, during Lent, a people is formed that recognizes its sins. These sins are evils that have not come from supposed enemies, but afflicts our hearts, and exist within us. We need to respond by courageously accepting responsibility for them. Moreover, we must accept that while this attitude is countercultural, it constitutes an authentic, honest and attractive option, especially in our times, when it is so easy to feel powerless in the face of a world that is in flames. Truly, the Church exists as a community of witnesses that recognize their sins.

But he goes on to remind us of what is entails in that little word, "sin":

Naturally, sin is personal, but it takes shape in the real and virtual contexts of life, in the attitudes we adopt towards each other that mutually impact us, and often within real economic, cultural, political and even religious “structures of sin.” Scripture teaches us that opposing idolatry with worship of the living God means daring to be free, and rediscovering freedom through an exodus, a journey, where we are no longer paralyzed, rigid or complacent in our positions, but gathered together to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who repent — individuals, businesses and institutions that admit they have done wrong!

Leo suggested to us, "we perceive in the ashes imposed on us the weight of a world that is ablaze, of entire cities destroyed by war." But it is our honesty about our sin, about our failures to love others as we have been loved, about our failure to act when we should have acted, about our failure to act with mercy, justice, and humility--it is out of the ashes of our honesty that we may yet rise:

“Where is their God?” the peoples ask themselves. Yes, dear friends, history, and even more, our own conscience, asks us to call death for what it is, and to carry its marks within us while also bearing witness to the resurrection. We recognize our sins so that we can be converted; this is itself a sign and testimony of Resurrection. Indeed, it means that we will not remain among the ashes, but will rise up and rebuild. Then the Easter Triduum, which we will celebrate as the summit of the Lenten journey, will unleash all its beauty and meaning. This will take place if we participate, through penance, in the passage from death to life, from powerlessness to the possibilities of God.

Presiding Bishop Rowe spoke similarly about the conversion of our communities that Lent invites us into:

Today, in the opening collect of our Ash Wednesday service , we ask God to “create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” I think of Pharaoh’s hard heart, and sometimes my own, when I say that prayer, and never more so than this year. These days, it can seem as if we are living in a wasteland of Pharaoh’s imagination. We see the principalities and powers promulgating violence, dehumanization, and injustice on our streets, and it seems nearly impossible not to react along the lines of the divisions and polarization that our political leaders have championed. It is easy to have a hardened heart. It is tempting to get angry and be governed by outrage, or to grow cold and indifferent.

If we turn from Pharoah’s imagination toward God’s imagination, however, we find a different path. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. With that great commandment, he is teaching us that we are all one, all part of God’s chosen people, and when we hate and revile each other, we are actually destroying ourselves. Theologian Howard Thurman, whose thinking helped shape the Civil Rights movement, put it like this in “ Jesus and the Disinherited ”: “The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values.” It is not easy to leave behind Pharoah’s imagination and its toxic drip of polarization that hardens our hearts and minds. The liberation we seek requires the conversion – the turning – of our hearts. We can begin that process anytime, but Lent gives us an opportunity to undertake the work together.

The journey of Lent is not just our personal journey, but it is about our work together. The ashes of Wednesday linger. Let me leave you with some concluding thoughts from Pope Leo's Lenten Message from earlier this month:

Likewise, our parishes, families, ecclesial groups and religious communities are called to undertake a shared journey during Lent, in which listening to the word of God, as well as to the cry of the poor and of the earth, becomes part of our community life, and fasting a foundation for sincere repentance. In this context, conversion refers not only to one’s conscience, but also to the quality of our relationships and dialogue. It means allowing ourselves to be challenged by reality and recognizing what truly guides our desires — both within our ecclesial communities and as regards humanity’s thirst for justice and reconciliation.

Dear friends, let us ask for the grace of a Lent that leads us to greater attentiveness to God and to the least among us. Let us ask for the strength that comes from the type of fasting that also extends to our use of language, so that hurtful words may diminish and give way to a greater space for the voice of others. Let us strive to make our communities places where the cry of those who suffer finds welcome, and listening opens paths towards liberation, making us ready and eager to contribute to building a civilization of love.

Whether you received the ashes on Wednesday or not, our work remains. May this Lenten season encourage us to deeper listening, greater honesty, emboldened compassion, and hearts and hands attentive to the God in our midst, who raises us from the dust to be children of the living God who is Love.

Last Sunday after Epiphany | February 15, 2026

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 11:45:05 GMT

Invitation to a Holy Lent

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:59:10 GMT

Rem ember, you are dust.

Dear friends, Lent is upon us. So, let me make a confession. I have grown to really love Lent.

When I wa s growing up I didn't really have much sense of Lent, except that my Catholic friends didn't eat meat on Fridays, and our school served fish sticks.

But the further along in my earthly pilgrimage I've come, the more beautiful I find Lent.

Beautiful? Yes!

Lent invites us to begin again. Lent invites us to scrape all the barnacles off our ship, to wipe down the slate, to unburden ourselves of the heaviness, or all the unbearable lightness, of our lives. Lent begs for us to become more solid, more whole, more free.

What might happen if we were willing to imagine and experience Lent these days as a voice luring us away from distraction and busy-ness, drawing us into a life unencumbered by the clutter we have accumulated--the clutter of our dreams and expectations, the clutter of our fears and self-importance, the clutter of our guilt and shame? What if Lent is Jesus calling us all back to our own hearts, to God's own heart?

Lent is just that. Lent asks us to consider who we are and who we are meant to be. Lent is finding a treasure hidden in a field and selling all that we have to get that field. Lent is being a pearl merchant who searches and searches until we find that pearl that is worth everything that we are and everything that we have, worth giving up all of that. Lent is the summons to the fullness of life before God in Christ. Because, as we say on Ash Wednesday, we are dust and to dust we shall return. But dust of the most spectacular sort.

We are dust into which God breathed the Spirit. We are dust that lives. We are dust that has been made into a blessing, like the ashes imposed on our heads. We are to be the ash through whom the whole world is to be blessed. If we will be set aside all that blinds us to the glory of God that threatens to burst out of our own lives.

And how do we set all of this aside? We begin by being determined to see ourselves more clearly, through confession, self-examination, and prayer. We fast, cutting our consumption to the basics that we might remember we are more than that which we consume. We attend to the giving of alms, of seeking out those in need and doing what we are able to meet those needs. We meditate on the Scriptures, not because that is an interesting intellectual exercise, but because we believe that in some wonderful, unexpected mystery, they hold the Word of God for us. We pray. We pray for clarity of vision. We pray for clarity of purpose. We pray for purity of heart--to will one thing--that which God wills. We spend time to do all of these things, knowing that Jesus draws alongside us on this road and will reveal to us all that we had forgotten to look for, the blessing that we didn't think was possible, the riches of our humble living, the glory of our small lives. We do all of this knowing that God is merciful, and more--God longs for us, waits for us, whispers our name. If we will but turn and listen and take just one step.

Lent gives us permission to make of our lives what God wants to make of our lives.

Ash Wednesday is this coming Wednesday, February 18. At that service, it is my solemn duty and great joy to invite you to the observance of a holy Lent, with these words:

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

You are invited. What will you make of your life this Lent. Will you hear? Will you listen? Will you take that one step that places you one stpep closer to God?

Pub Theology 2/10/26 -- Yes to acts of kindness, but why random?

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:14:08 GMT

Every now and again we dip into the archives to bring back a topic from a past discussion. When you've been doing this for more than a dozen years, there's plenty of good stuff to revisit. So we're doing that this week, and it turns out to be a surprisingly timely decision.

Next Tuesday marks Random Acts of Kindness Day (yes, really), and it turns out that nine years ago, almost to the very day, our conversation revolved around the idea of random acts of kindness.

Since we last talked about it, the idea of random acts of kindness has become surprisingly institutionalized. According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation , which actively encourages just such things, "When we choose kindness, our brains light up with oxytocin, dopamine, and connection; reminding us that kindness is not just good for the world, it is good for us." And almost 250,000 people worldwide have signed up with the foundation as RAKtivists, pledging to try to make the world a better place one act of kindness at a time.

For its part, the foundation, which aims to make kindness a norm, offers kindness tips and suggestions, creates teaching materials, and encourages kindness in our schools, homes, and in our workplaces. For example, when on social media they suggest: "Scroll until you see someone's creative effort -- a drawing, recipe, a photo -- and leave a genuine, specific compliment." To be honest, that sounds like a really nice idea!

Here's the prompt from our discussion way back in 2017: In 1982 Anne Herbert wrote the phrase "practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a restaurant placemat in Sausalito, Calif. Since then, the call to practice random acts of kindness has become firmly rooted in our social culture. So what's an example of this? When's the last time you were on the receiving end of a random act of kindness? What did that feel like? When was the last time you performed one? How did that make you feel? Is such a gesture really meaningful, or is it a way to avoid making kindness a part of our everyday lives and routines?

Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday February. 10 starting at 7pm. We gather at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany | February 8, 2026

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:42:30 GMT

Which Borders are Christian?

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:41:58 GMT

Where Did Early Christians Think Their Borders Were?

There is often talk about what Christians should think about citizenship, what Christians should think about immigration, what Christians should think about national borders.

Just this week, during a press gaggle, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was asked this question: "Pope Leo has cited Matthew 25:35 to critique Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. How would you respond to Pope Leo in scripture?" (Matthew 25:35: "...for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me....") Johnson gave a tw0-minute response, and then later a longer statement on his social media, in which he said "borders and walls are biblical, from the Old Testament to the New." The rest of the answer was convoluted, trying to reconcile the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger with the responsibility the Bible gives to civil authorities (in Johnson's view) to maintain order, etc.

All of this is, to some extent, an exercise in missing the point. Do go and read Matthew 25:31-46, and I think you'll see what I mean. Johnson seems to think this is an "individual ethic," not a civic responsibility. That's a clever way of getting around the law of Christ, an artful way of avoiding the cost of discipleship, in my view.

But it raises a deeper question: which borders are Christian borders? Is there a Christian approach to bordered territory?

In thinking about that question, I like to ask what my ancestors said, and yes, what the New Testament especially has to say on the matter.

I think of Jesus: "Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.'" (John 18:35-36)

I think of Paul: "But our citizenship [or, commonwealth] is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." (Philippians 3:20)

I think of the author of Hebrews: "All of these [Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and Sarah] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13-16)

But I also think about what other early Christians said about who they took themselves to be. And I think about a passage from a text from sometime in the second or third century of Christianity, called the Letter to Diognetus . The author addresses the letter to "most excellent Diognetus," whoever that may be, who has apparently asked to learn more about who these Christians are and what their way of life is. Now, there's a fair bit of anti-Jewishness in the letter, too, because Christians were trying to distinguish themselves from Jews in this period. The author is trying to show Diognetus that they are neither Jews nor Gentiles, but a "new race or way of life." But what I really find striking is this passage from chapter 5:

For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric way of life. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the thought and reflection of ingenious people, nor do they promote any human doctrine, as some do. But while they live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. They live in their own countries, but only as nonresidents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. ...They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.

The early Christians, according to this author, were cosmopolitans in their daily lives: the cosmos (the whole word) was their polis (home-city), cosmopolitans. They noted the borders mortals draw. But they thought they were irrelevant. "They live in their own countries, but only as nonresidents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign." This is not a case for open borders, but it is a repudiation of the notion of a "Christian nation," and of the notion that borders are biblical. Because it is a declaration of the irrelevance of borders. It's an affirmation that borders are always secondary, that our allegiance as Christians is not to any set of borders except those of the kingdom of God, and no one has yet been able to measure those borders. Christians have from our earliest days pledged our allegiance first and foremost to the kingdom in which our common humanity and our common status under God is what is most important. And in that situation, there is no line between individual responsibility and civic responsibility. What God requires of us is required of us no matter which borders we currently inhabit.

And what does the Lord require of us, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. (Micah 6:8) We cannot claim to be God's people and condone cruel enforcement of unjust laws. We cannot walk humbly with our God if we are determined to make God say only what we want God to say and to assure ourselves that God underwrites all of our vicious fantasies. We cannot claim to be Christian while wielding the sword against our neighbors. We cannot be God's wandering people if we've decided this land is God's land, our land, and that those borders must be policed with cruelty.

I'll remind you again of what St. Paul says: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."

Pub Theology 2/3/26 -- "Deadbots" and the "digital-afterlife industry"

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:00:36 GMT

Just when I thought we had exhausted the possible universe of discussion topics about all the various and troubling ways that artificial intelligence technologies are promising to reshape the human experience (and rarely are these for the good) I come across another example that makes my head spin. This one is populated by what are called "deadbeats" being built by companies in what is coming to be known as the "digital-afterlife industry."

There's a long article over at The Atlantic's website ( click here for a gift link to the story ) that goes into detail about the people and the companies developing the products that in some cases promise to make grief obsolete by giving users AI chatbot versions of deceased loved ones -- for a monthly subscription fee, of course. Or, in industry parlance, access to AI "deadbot" versions of those loved ones. And it seems that this is a lucrative technology. In 2024, the industry was valued at more than $22 billion, a sum expected to more than triple in less than 10 years.

There are a lot of questions that emerge as we think about what all of this means for the way we experience grief and loss: "'Deadbots,' as these posthumous AI creations are known, promise to replace the dead, and the way they are remembered. This raises plenty of ethical issues, not least the extent to which turning deadbots into marketable products will rely on exploiting people in mourning. But perhaps the biggest question is how such a product might shift our experience of personal grief and collective memory. Is grief merely a painful human shortcoming that we haven’t learned to optimize our way out of yet, or does it have a purpose?"

As the article makes clear, this technology is very different from the familiar ways we have come to memorialize those we have lost, whether through portraiture, literature, memoir, and so on, which are interpretive expressions of the living's memories of the dead. Instead, "Interactive griefbots are generative, producing “new utterances, new reactions, even new ‘memories’ and ‘behaviors,’ all under the guise of the deceased,” she said. This shift from representation to emulation presents a new ethical line, one that may require new legal protections. Both death and grief are states of profound vulnerability, she warned; the dead cannot stand up for their own interests, and the bereaved may not be in a psychological state to protect themselves from financial manipulation by a company incentivized to prolong their grief.

One company, called You, Only Virtual, or YOV, says its point isn't to make grief easier, but rather to bypass it altogether. The company launched with the tagline, "Never have to say goodbye," and promises a user experience that will make you feel as if your loved one never died. In other words, they are promising not to capture every aspect of the person who has passed, but instead to capture how the user felt with that person when they were alive. The point of the interaction is "about inducing the emotions of the living, not imitating the emotions of the dead."

We're going to talk about all of this in our conversation this week. Not just about the technology, but about grief itself, how we experience it, and what grief does to and for us. Read the article by clicking on the link above, then join us for the discussion this Tuesday, Feb. 3, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany | February 1, 2026

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 12:32:21 GMT

Praying in Unsafe Times

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:28:32 GMT

"...Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances..."

In Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, he ends the letter with a set of instructions: "And we urge you, brothers and sisters, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" (1 Thess. 5:14-18)."

Give thanks in all circumstances? Pray without ceasing? Even in these circumstances? How are we supposed to do that, exactly?

First Peter echoes Paul, also quoting Psalm 34:

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; bu, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this reason that you were called--that you might inherit a blessing. For

Those who desire life and desire to see good days,

let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit;

let them turn away from evil and do good;

let them seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do with is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil.

Last Sunday, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, published a pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church. You can read the full statement here , but here is the heart of his message:

This is God’s call to The Episcopal Church now, and it is not an easy one. In the United States, we no longer live in a time when we can expect to practice our faith without risk, and we are confronting what vulnerable communities of faith have experienced for generations. Our right to worship freely as one church, committed to the dignity of every human being, has been curtailed by the fear that too many immigrant Christians face when they leave their homes. Peaceful protests, a right long enshrined in the Constitution, are now made deadly. Carrying out the simple commands of Jesus—feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, making peace—now involves risks for the church and grave danger for those we serve. As Christians, we must acknowledge that this chaos and division is not of God, and we must commit ourselves to paying whatever price our witness requires of us.

In the coming years, our church will continue to be tested in every conceivable way as we insist that death and despair do not have the last word, and as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God. We will be required to hold fast to God’s promise to make all things new, because our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness.

It is difficult to pray in the midst of these circumstances.

When I was first starting out on my life of discipleship, when I decided not just be a fan of Jesus but actually to follow him, I started reading my Bible and memorizing Bible verses. One such verse that has carried me through some difficult times is from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path" (Proverbs 3:5-6--yes, I memorized it from the King James!). This is really just another way of saying, "Pray without ceasing," or "in your hearts, sanctify Christ as Lord." It means that you and I have been called (as 1 Peter says), and our calling is not changed or abrogated by shifting circumstances. The mission is the same. Our standing orders are the same: Love one another; do not repay evil for evil. Stay close on the heels of Jesus, and even though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil.

I know, I know. Pretty words, but easier said than done.

Third Sunday after Epiphany | January 25, 2026

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:44:48 GMT

A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:47:04 GMT

Sheep in the Midst of Wolves

There are a pair of commemorations that fall a week apart in January: The Confession of Peter (January 18) and The Conversion of Paul (January 25). The book of Acts narrates the early life of the church first with Peter as the central apostolic figure, and then with Paul taking the reins. The apostles were those who were sent with a charge to proclaim the good news of God's kingdom, until Christ comes again. Peter takes up the mantle, in one way of understanding it, when he confesses Christ to be the Anointed One (see Matthew 16:13-19 ).

I will be talking a bit more about the Conversion of Paul on Sunday. But as I was looking ahead, I noticed the Gospel lesson for the commemoration is from Matthew 10:16-22:

Jesus said to the twelve, "See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved."

The warning for Paul, and for the Twelve, is an important caution for us, too, as we go about following where Christ calls us: "See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

Fittingly, I thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose holiday was Monday. Dr. King gave a sermon that is found in the little volume Strength to Love . He titled it "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," basing his message on the need to be wise as serpents (tough-minded) and innocent as doves (tender-hearted). In invite you to read the whole sermon , which you can find here (I don't know the blog well, so I don't necessarily endorse it, but it was the only place I could find it in its entirety online).

Dr. King's point was that to resist evil, to work for justice and peace (all of which we own in our baptismal covenant), we must be neither soft-minded nor hard-hearted. It's a message that we need to hear today, too, because injustice continues to plague us. Here's an excerpt you might find helpful today:

A third way is open to our quest for freedom, namely nonviolent resistance, which combines tough mindedness and tenderheartedness and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the soft minded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted. ... Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence.

I am thankful that we worship a God who is both tough minded and tenderhearted. ... God is neither hardhearted nor soft minded. He is tough minded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.

At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the Earth, we need to know that there is a God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like the Greek herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man. But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance. When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice that will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.

Like the God we serve, like Christ, may we also be tough-minded enough to transcend the world, and tenderhearted enough to live in it.

Pub Theology 1/20/26 -- The arc of the moral universe

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:44:16 GMT

It has been our practice in recent years to try to build our discussion around the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whenever our conversation falls around the celebration of his birthday. This seems especially appropriate this year given the events unfolding in Minneapolis and elsewhere since the start of the new year.

This time we're going to focus on the idea referenced in our illustration above. This is often misquoted as "the arc of the universe ..." which leaves out King's important qualifier, the "moral," universe, not the universe more generally. Before we did deeper, what do you think is the key difference or differences between the two ideas, the universe generally vs. the moral universe?

King used this quote many times in his sermons and speeches, and according to Stanford University historian Clayborn Carson , he borrowed it from 1850s abolitionist Theodore Parker. In fact, King drew quite heavily on the oratorical tradition of the early abolitionists, bringing their words and sentiments to bear in the 1960s struggle for civil rights. But what are they getting at here? Is the idea that while things may be bad now, if we wait long enough the scales will tilt to the side of justice? Or is it not that simple.

What this little snippet of a quote does not do, is give any suggestion as to how the arc of the moral universe bends. Or what is required to make it do so. So what do you think? If the arc of the moral universe ultimately bends toward justice, by what mechanism or mechanisms does it do so? And what is our role in that process? Now that I think about it, this train of thought is kind of a continuation of something we landed on last week in our discussion of hope.

James McGrath, a professor of New Testament language and literature at Butler University, addresses things this way:

"The arc of the universe may bend towards justice, but it certainly does not do so in a steady and straight line. Precisely because of the slow but real progress ... the racists, misogynists, antisemites, Islamophobes, and homophobes are offering a backlash. Progress towards equality has always involved a process like this. It is important to emphasize that, because those of us who are living through this particular moment can feel like these are unprecedented times."

Join us for the conversation this week as we talk about the arc of the moral universe and how it bends. And if this isn't a meaty enough topic, here's one more MLK quote that we can chat about if we have the time:

"If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God." The only trick here, of course, is figuring out what does and does not conflict with God's will, and who decides.

Come out of the cold this Tuesday evening, Jan. 20, and let us know what you think. The discussion starts at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Second Sunday after Epiphany | January 18, 2026

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 01:48:57 GMT

Pub Theology 1/13/26 -- Hope in troubled times?

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 15:54:00 GMT

I don't know about you, but it feels like 2026 has gotten off to a really rocky start.

Where even to begin? Wars, and threats of war. Economic turmoil and uncertainty. The actions of federal agents causing chaos, fear, and sadly, deaths and injuries to innocent people. In short, things look pretty bleak, and what's over the horizon doesn't seem all that much better. In fact, the pessimists among us might suggest that things will continue to get worse.

What are we to do? Is there anything you're looking forward to this year? Is there anything you're hopeful about? And is hope even the answer? The quote in the illustration above has been attributed to a number of different people over the years, from film director James Cameron to legendary football coach Vince Lombardi as well as various military leaders and politicians. It shows up in movies like "F1" and "Deepwater Horizon." And in "Mad Max: Fury Road," Max says: "Hope is a mistake. If you can't fix what's broken, you'll go insane."

Go back far enough and we get a variation of this from the classical Greek historian Thucydides in the Melian Dialogue from his "History of Peloponnesian War" Here he calls hope "danger's comforter" that can only be indulged in by those possessing the abundance of resources necessary to avoid disaster when things go wrong.

And yet we are told that the Christian message is one of hope. The idea that our "hope is in the Lord" appears in countless scriptural passages, hymn texts, and sacred poetry. For example, in the hymn "I'll seek his blessings," A.M. Cagle writes: "My hope is in the Lord, the blessing bleeding lamb. I'll seek his blessings every noon."

So in our conversation this evening, we're going to talk about hope. What does it mean to you? Where do you find it in these difficult times? Is hope a strategy, or is it "danger's comforter'? In short, is hope a luxury for the few fortunate enough to be able to ride out whatever storms comes next? Is hope a mistake?

Join us for the discussion tonight, Jan. 13, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

First Sunday after Epiphany | January 11, 2026

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:23:29 GMT

Second Sunday after Christmas | January 4, 2026

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 07:00:35 GMT

Christmas Eve | December 24, 2025

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 11:54:55 GMT

On Christmas Eve, all are welcome to join us as we celebrate the birth of Christ. Whether you are worshiping with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence is a meaningful part of our community as we gather on this holy night.

We invite you to join us for one of our Christmas Eve services:
7:00 p.m. Festal Choral Eucharist
11:00 p.m. Contemplative Midnight Mass

Those who are unable to attend in person are warmly invited to join us via our live stream for the 7:00 p.m. service.

Fourth Sunday in Advent | December 21, 2025

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:20:11 GMT

Third Sunday in Advent | December 14, 2025

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 11:32:25 GMT

Pub Theology 12/9/25 -- The Holy Family has been detained

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 18:40:00 GMT

You may have run across this story over the last week or so, but if not, the above is the Nativity scene on display out from on St. Susanna Parish, a Roman Catholic church in Dedham, MA, a suburb of Boston. Notice what's missing from the scene: Yep, Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus are gone, replaced with the sign "ICE was here," a reference to the federal agency that has been engaged in aggressive raids and detentions targeting immigrants and refugees the government argues are in the country illegally. The implication, of course, is that the religious figures have picked up for immigration violations.

Despite criticism from some in the Dedham community, and leaders of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, the parish says the display will be kept as it is: "Father Stephen Josoma said he chose to focus the nativity on immigration after speaking with several of the refugee families the church has worked with in the past few years. Several of his congregants, who come from countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Afghanistan, expressed fear about what the stepped-up deportations could mean if they were sent back to the violence they fled. ... He said th.e display is meant to show “the context Christmas is happening in this year,” adding that current immigration policies feel “brutal” and threaten the status of people who have already settled in the U.S."

A spokesman for the archdiocese called the scene "politically divisive" and called on the parish to return the display to its "proper sacred purpose." You can read more in this article from Boston Public Radio station WBUR . For its part, the parish says it has no plans to budge on its nativity display, which for more than a decade has served as a vehicle for the congregation to comment on politically charged issues like gun control, climate change, and immigration.

What do you make of this? Both the specific display at St. Susanna's this year as well as the larger idea of using a Nativity scene to comment on controversial issues of politics and social justice? Josoma, the parish's rector, acknowledges that some people might just want to come and see "a nice little place for baby Jesus and his family to celebrate Christmas," but that he believes religious art should engage the viewer in more profound ways. So is this sacrilegious or a creative act of bearing witness? After all, in the Gospel of Matthew we learn that a few days after Jesus birth an angel comes to Joseph and warns him to flee with his family to Egypt to escape King Herod's plans to find and kill the infant Jesus. Is the parish's display an act of political resistance, and is that appropriate for a church?

Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Dec. 9, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Second Sunday in Advent | December 7, 2025

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 11:48:06 GMT

Pub Theology 12/2/25 -- The allure of silence

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:47:29 GMT

"Only when I understood that I had a primal need for silence was I able to begin my search for it – and there, deep beneath a cacophony of traffic noise and thoughts, music and machinery, iPhones and snow ploughs, it lay in wait for me. Silence." -- So writes Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge.

In tonight's discussion we're going to talk about the role of silence in our everyday and spiritual lives. For one window into this, consider the practice of Quaker Meeting, in which worship takes place in collective silence.

As Tracy Chevalier writes in The Guardian : "Since their establishment in the mid-17th century, Quakers – or the Society of Friends, as they are formally known – have worshipped in collective silence, without the intervention of priest or minister, listening in the stillness for something non-verbal and timeless tucked deep inside. Some call it God, or the Spirit, or the Inner Light, or something less overtly religious. By stripping away noise, it is easier to let go of the everyday, settle one's thoughts, and listen. Quaker Meeting is much like meditation, except done together. The communal nature of the experience is essential, for being with others makes the silence more valuable. Sometimes at Meeting when I'm restless, I sense the stillness of those around me and it reminds me of what I'm doing, so that I sit still and try again."

In his book, "Silence, in the Age of Noise," Kagge asks, and then seeks the answers to three basic questions: "What is silence? Where is it? Why is it more important now than ever?"

We will look for our own answers in our conversation beginning at 7 pm this evening at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. Check out the link below to read an excerpt from Kagge's book.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/23/the-power-of-silence-in-the-smartphone-age?fbclid=IwY2xjawObzTNleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFObmh6OEdIZGJjUklzR0dEc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHocsRhIVswsmRIzbW5YQMFbtEEaZX0DCx_8wGMMljDE0ojk0MuzgCHlR63M9_aem_Ea0AQyoEEfNf5o7ebu_OPg

First Sunday in Advent | November 30, 2025

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 13:17:42 GMT

Last Sunday after Pentecost | November 23, 2025

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:04:13 GMT

Pub Theology 11/18/25 -- Jesus ex machina

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:44:29 GMT

Artificial intelligence (AI for the uninitiated) seems to be worming its way into more and more aspects of our daily lives. Or at least AI hype seems to be.

In high schools and colleges we have students using AI to do their homework, in the working world job-seekers are using AI to write and submit job applications while businesses use AI to read and evaluate those applications. Folks are using AI to plan their vacation itineraries, set fitness goals and create workout plans, write recipes, give them relationship advice, to take the place of therapists, and even as stand-ins for real world friends, confidants, or romantic partners. And now it's come for our churches.

Some years back in one of our pre-pandemic conversations, we talked about the role of technology in our faith lives, but at that time the most exotic application we had run across was a "virtual reality Jesus experience" that purported to let users walk alongside Jesus and the disciples through the Gospel narrative. That sounded pretty lame to all of us, including our resident VR enthusiast at the time. Let's just say the technology has ... moved forward ... since then.

Where VR Jesus offered a chance to walk with Jesus, new AI-based apps will let you talk with the Son of God, or at least a chatbot version of the Savior. The Text with Jesus app lets users ask questions of and converse with not just Jesus, but other biblical figures, from apostles to prophets. Apparently the premium version will unlock the ability to chat with Satan too.

Other AI-powered faith resources are out there too, including EpiscoBot , created for The Episcopal Church by TryTank, a research institute associated with the church's Virginia Theological Seminary. This draws on church resources and teaching to respond to faith-based and spiritual queries. For Roman Catholics, apps like One Day Confession and Confession -- Catholic (you can find them in the Apple App Store) help the faithful confession and spiritual reflection. And a California megachurch pastor has created an AI chatbot version of himself to provide one-on-one spiritual guidance, all for the low, low cost of $49 a month. We're not providing a link to that one.

What to make of all this? That's the topic of our conversation this week. To help you think about the issues, here's a link to an article just published in the UK-based web magazine UnHerd, written by a friend of mine, a priest in the Church of England. In it the Rev. Gerry Lynch writes that despite the perils and pitfalls, "Some churches will nonetheless become tempted by the AI hype. They should heed the lessons learnt during the pandemic, when online services and “virtual church” were presented as a God-sent means of Christian revival instead of a regrettable necessity in extreme circumstances." And here's another story on one experiment in having an AI Jesus hear confession at a Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland.

Join us for the discussion this Tuesday evening, Nov. 18, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. Word on the street has it that we may even reach out directly, or via text at least, with Jesus himself and see what the Redeemer of Mankind has to say.

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost | November 16, 2025

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:06:50 GMT

Pub Theology 11/11/25 -- Spicing up the leftovers

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 17:31:59 GMT

Our usual conversation got a little sidetracked last week as our discussion leader was traveling due to a family commitment. But that means we've got some tasty leftovers that we can chew on this week!

If you recall, last week we're going to talk a little about the Beatitudes, as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. Take a look at last week's topic for the precise passage, but the principal question we were going to address was this: If the words of Jesus about loving your enemies and so on are central to what it means to be a Christian, how well do we measure up? Time permitting, once we've wrestled with this, we've got a couple of other questions to which we can turn, one scripturally based, the other philosophical.

In Matthew's Gospel (6:34), Jesus has some words that seem pretty relevant in these anxiety-filled days: "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." Is this good advice? Or even realistic to ask? What do you think is Jesus' basis for saying this? Finally, is not having to worry something that only privileged people can practice?

And now, to throw a little philosophy into the mix, the French philosopher Rene Descartes (no horse jokes please) said this: "We do not describe the world we see. We see the world we can describe." What do you think he is getting at here, and do you agree?

Join us for the conversation this evening, Tuesday Nov. 11, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost | November 9, 2025

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 12:20:38 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 11/4/25 -- There's nothing easy about this

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 20:55:37 GMT

This past Sunday at St. Mary's we celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. It was an opportunity for us to remember and pray for those who have gone on before, and to think about their witness and the witness of all the saints, whether officially designated by The Church or not. It was a beautiful service in which we welcomed new members of the congregation, experienced the joy of a baptism, and lit candles for those departed who were near and dear.

But that's not what we're here to talk about this week. The service also featured a famous bit of scripture that gives us a lot to think about. And to wonder whether we're up to the task. Our Gospel reading was from Luke 6:20-31, the version of the beatitudes, or blessings, taken from Jesus Sermon on the Plain. (Matthew's version, 5:3-10, comes from the Sermon on the Mount.) In this sermon, Jesus lays out four blessings and four woes, but it's the last part that is a particularly challenging call to action.

Jesus lays this charge before his apostles and the gathered crowd: "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you."

This is some pretty powerful food for thought, and so we are going to spend some time thinking about and talking about this in our conversation this week. Rather than a series of questions, let's just go with this. If these words of Jesus are central to what it means to be a Christian, how well do we measure up?

Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, Nov. 4, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

All Saints' Day | November 2, 2025

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 10:52:02 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Twentieh Sunday after Pentecost | October 25, 2025

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 02:38:34 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/21/25 -- The burdens we carry

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 15:42:42 GMT

I was having coffee with a friend this morning, and they brought up an idea that I think makes for a provocative topic of conversation. The thought was both simple but also painfully complex. What would our lives and relationships be like if the burdens we all carry, the weight of our traumas, anxieties, cares, and worries, were visible for all to see?

If you need a visual, imagine walking through life with a big book strapped to your back in which was written all the things that make you the person you are in the world, all the good and all the bad. Or shouldering a block of stone upon which all these things were engraved. No longer would you have to explain why you are the way you are, for it would be there for the viewing. But neither could you hide yourself from others. Your story would literally be right there, on display for everyone. It wouldn't be written on your face, per se, but it would be there, apparent to anyone who looks.

Would this be a blessing, or a curse? No longer would we have to explain ourselves to others. Why we are the way we are would be plain to see. But no longer could we conceal the things about ourselves that we'd prefer not to acknowledge, or admit to ourselves or to others. What would it be like to live this way? How would it change the way you think of others? How would it change the way you think of yourself?

And because this is Pub Theology, I would be remiss if I didn't bring in Jesus' words from the Gospel of Matthew (11:28-30): '“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

We'll talk about all of this in our conversation this evening. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 19, 2025

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 10:06:09 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 12, 2025

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 10:46:03 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/6/25 -- Separating church and hate

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 19:41:16 GMT

First a disclaimer: Despite appearances to the contrary, this is neither a book review nor an endorsement of the new book by actor, comedian, and political commentator John Fugelsang titled "Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds." From the title you get the general idea of where the author is going with this.

Fugelsang's story is a compelling one. He was raised in a large politically, ethnically, religiously, and racially diverse family as a progressive Roman Catholic by a mother who was a former nun and a father who was a former Franciscan monk. As he puts it in the introduction to his book, "I am here because two people broke a promise to God." What he wrestles with in this book is how to come to terms with, and then fight back against, what he views as the hijacking of Christianity and the abandonment of the faith that Jesus taught by religious and political leaders who have perverted the religion in the pursuit of their own power and selfish interests.

In the introduction, Fugelsang writes: "This is a book about what Christianity started out as, what it became, and why it's still worth fighting for. ... The extreme right uses Jesus' name as camouflage. This is a guide to camouflage removal."

In building our conversation this week around this book, I acknowledge from the start that none of us have (probably) read it. My copy is on its way thanks to The House of Bezos. In the meantime, you can read Fugelsang's introduction by clicking on this link . You can also watch Fugelsang's appearance on The Daily Show by following this link. But I think we can still have a quality discussion around some of what he raises. First, before we talk about the message, let's talk about the messenger. Fugelsang admits that he is no member of the clergy, nor scholar, nor theologian. So what qualifies him to write this book and level the critiques he makes? In short, does the messenger matter? Some quotes from the book will also serve as spurs to our conversation.

“I generally trust people who are seeking the truth; I tend to be wary of those who claim they’ve found it.”
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” (Quoting Susan B. Anthony)
“In focusing on what cannot be proven, many Christians fall into the trap of a Christianity that’s more about defending the supernatural than embodying the moral teachings of Jesus. It’s not the miracles driving people away from religion, it’s the Christians who don’t live by Jesus’s words about how we’re supposed to treat each other.”
“[R]emember—if your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies but keeps telling you who your enemies are, you’re not really in a church.”
“And that’s the point. We’re called to follow Christ, not the Bible. In fact, please understand this: the Bible does not tell us to follow the Bible. The Bible tells us to follow Christ. But Biblical Christians follow the Bible. They do not, in fact, attempt to follow Christ.”
“Not only are Christians supposed to prioritize following Jesus’s words above the other parts of the Bible, that’s also quite literally why this religion got its name.”
“These were the fundamentalists, the power-hungry grifters who took advantage of the fact that most people don’t know the Bible all that well. They were charlatans, frauds, hypocrites, and villains. And they made for great TV.”
“Spiritual people use religion to become better people. Fundamentalists use religion to pretend they’re better than other people.”
“And I was taught—relentlessly—that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized: Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. Fighting injustice with nonviolence, like Dr. King and Gandhi. Standing up for the less fortunate, like Dorothy Day and Catholic Charities. Love. Empathy. Compassion.”

Obviously, no collection of cherry-picked quotations can capture the totality of Fugelsang's argument. But it can be our jumping off point for discussion. Join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 7, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 5, 2025

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 20:54:42 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/30/25 -- Misquotes and money

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:41:11 GMT

This last Sunday's scripture readings featured one of the most oft misquoted lines in all the Bible. You've probably heard this one: Money is the root of all evil. But here's the problem. That's not actually what Paul says in his letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 6:10). Here's the actual line:

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains." A few verses later (6:17-19), Paul continues: "As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life."

The disconnect between the actual quote and the regularly misquoted alternative text (I plead guilty to having made this error myself) points, I think, to the complicated relationship that many people of faith, specifically Christians, have with wealth, or perhaps their lack of it. So let's talk about this distinction, and whether it really matters.

Why do you think it is the misquote that is so commonly thought to be the actual words from the Bible? What does that tell us about the way we think about the role of money in society? In short, what's the real difference between saying " money is the root of all evil" rather than " love of money is a root ..."? Can we argue that this is a distinction without an actual difference? What makes the love of money more problematic than the money itself? If you had Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth, wouldn't you be swimming in it gleefully as well? So what's the problem there? Can you accumulate McDuck-level riches and still be on the right side of Paul's advice to Timothy? Can you find yourself barely scraping by financially and be on the wrong side? What is Paul warning us against, and how does the warning hit in our own lives.

We'll be talking all about it in our conversation this week, Tuesday Sept. 30, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. Join us for the discussion.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 28, 2025

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:19:04 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/22/25 -- Stories and questions about stories

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 17:53:48 GMT

Every now and again, your friendly staff here at PubTheo pays attention to the Sunday sermon, and in the process gets a little topic inspiration. Fr. Andy was preaching on the parable of the shrewd manager, Luke 16:1-3, (or unjust steward, depending on which list of parables you are looking at), and he made an interesting point about the trouble with taking the parables at face value.

This is something that we spent some time talking about in the early days of Pub Theology conversations. Basically, why can't Jesus just give us the message straight rather than talking in riddles and stories that leave key points up to our own interpretation? In short, why doesn't he just tell us what to do already? One of Andy's points, or at least from my vantage point in the pews, is that the simple interpretation of the parables of easily digested morality tales can lead us to draw some very odd conclusions about what kind of behaviors are or are not in line with the Gospels. In the case of the parable in question, you could walk away believing that God will reward you for profiting from dishonest business dealings.

This tells us something, I think, about both the perils and promise of stories, which is what the parables are. Stories with a purpose. Storytelling is probably one of the oldest, if not the oldest (along with song) of human cultural practices Those entrusted with the responsibility of handing down stories hold exalted roles in society, whether bard, or skald, firekeeper, or griot. It's still left to the listener, though, to draw meaning from those stories.

Neuroscientist Emily Falk, in this episode of the podcast Hidden Brain , (this part comes at about the 40-minute mark) argues that stories have the ability to help us avoid defensiveness when presented with information we might otherwise perceive as criticism or negative feedback. She argues that our brains reason differently when challenging ideas are presented in a story rather than stated directly to us as facts.

We're going to spend some time in our conversation this week talking about the power of stories and the lessons we learn from them. What role have stories played in your life? What's the first story you remember hearing, or reading for yourself? When you hear or read a story, or for that matter see a play, or watch a TV show or film, are you attuned to the possibility of meanings beyond the straightforward lines of the narrative? Is it just entertainment, or is there something deeper going on? If you look for meaning in stories, or if you unexpectedly get smacked in the head by a meaning you weren't anticipating, what are the lenses that bring those meanings into focus for you? If someone asks you to share your story with them, what do you think they are looking for?

Join us for a discussion of stories and more tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 23, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Fifthteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 21, 2025

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:16:53 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/16/25 -- Dealer's choice

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 16:26:19 GMT

Due to a long weekend of travel and a job that actually requires my attention, your faithful team here at Pub Theology hasn't found the time to work up a full-on topic for tonight's discussion. But have no fear! There is a plan!

As we've done a few times in the past, we will take an open-mike / dealer's choice approach to our conversation this evening. We'll have some discussion prompts and conversation starters lined up in advance, but we'll also have the freedom to follow the thread of conversation wherever it decides to go.

Join us for mystery of it all tonight starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 14, 2025

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 11:01:54 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/9/25 -- Time for a change of scenery

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:15:17 GMT

You've probably heard it said that a change of scenery is all that's needed to get a little perspective. That everything looks different with a change of scenery. Musician and singer-songwriter Kurt Vile has said that for him, a change of scenery is a source of inspiration. And here's a take on changing scenery from humorist Lewis Grizzard. He says, "Life is like a dogsled race. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes."

To mark the start of our 13th year of Pub Theology conversations, we're going to talk about this idea of a change of scenery, and it's only fitting that we do so with a little bit of a change of scenery ourselves. For this week's discussion (and hopefully for the rest of this PubTheo season and maybe more) we're moving back to downtown Lake Orion. We'll be meeting at Irish Tavern, on North Broadway, after spending the last several years up in Oxford. This new location should be a familiar venue for PubTheo veterans. We met there for a number of years in the long-ago pre-pandemic days when it was 51 North Brewing.

While we'll spend some time catching up with each other after our long summer hiatus, we are going to dig a little deeper into this idea of change of scenery. What does that notion mean to you? When someone says, "I could use a change of scenery," what do you think they are getting at? In other words, what does a change of scenery mean to them? More importantly, have you ever felt like you could benefit from a change of scenery, whether big or small? And what does that mean to you? When that feeling comes on, what do you do in response? What are your experiences with a change of scenery? Does it provide perspective? Does it fuel your creativity? Or are you harnessed on the third row of the dogsled team, with a view that doesn't change and that you feel powerless to do anything about?

We're going to talk about all of this in our conversation this week. Join us at Irish Tavern as we return to Lake Orion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 9. The discussion starts at 7pm.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 7, 2025

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 11:59:16 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 31, 2025

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 11:12:53 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 24, 2025

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 11:41:38 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 17, 2025

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 10:59:57 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 10, 2025

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 10:29:16 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 3, 2025

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 11:05:02 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost | July 27, 2025

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 10:57:23 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost | July 20, 2025

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 11:26:56 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Copy of Fifth Sunday after Pentecost | July 13, 2025

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 11:53:52 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost | July 6, 2025

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 10:40:12 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Third Sunday after Pentecost | Jun 29, 2025

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:33:35 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Second Sunday after Pentecost | Jun 22, 2025

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 10:39:24 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

First Sunday after Pentecost | Jun 15, 2025

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 10:02:10 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m.. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pentecost | Jun 8, 2025

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 12:56:56 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology -- Summer hiatus

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 15:15:16 GMT

Well, we've come to that time of year again. Now that June is here, your hard-working team here at PubTheo is taking a break from the rigors of figuring out what to talk about week after week. So we will be on our annual summer break until we start back up again in September.

We'll see you on the cusp of fall. In the meantime, some of us are going to go fishing.

Pub Theology 5/27/25 -- High on faith

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Tue, 27 May 2025 17:36:35 GMT

Some seven years back, researchers at NYU and Johns Hopkins University launched a study in which they enlisted some two dozen religious leaders from a variety of traditions -- priests, pastors, rabbis, Zen Buddhist monks, Islamic prayer leaders -- to take part in a research project exploring psychedelics and sacred experience. The experiment was intended to assess whether a transcendental experience makes the leaders more effective and confident in their work and how it alters their religious thinking. You can read about the setup of the study in this article from The Guardian .

It turns out that the study produced some really interesting results. A story published a few weeks ago in The New Yorker tells the tale. Unfortunately that article is locked behind a paywall, but the author, Michael Pollan (who has written extensively about the use of psychedelics and their effects), however, summarized some of what the study found in this interview . Pollan writes that the participants described their regarded their mushroom-induced trips as authentic mystical experiences, not just a drug experience. For some, the experience was truly transformative.

One of the surprising findings that Pollan remarked upon was that "their experiences were not always consistent with the imagery or symbolism of their own faiths. One Christian theologian said God was like a Jewish mother. In fact, most of the people I interviewed felt that the divine they encountered was feminine. That blew their minds; and it blew mine, too. ... Just about everybody had an encounter with the divine, and for the most part it was a feminine, nurturing, sweet presence. We have such a patriarchal understanding of religion, and most stereotypes of God are gendered masculine. So I think it’s ironic, and somewhat humorous, that under the influence of psychedelics God turns out to be more female than male."

Nearly all of the participants rated their first experience with psilocybin as among the top five most spiritually significant events of their lives. Among participants who had two sessions, the researchers found that a striking number—seventy-nine per cent—reported that the experience had enriched their prayer, their effectiveness in their vocation, and their sense of the sacred in daily life. It turns out that there is a long history of people trying to trace a connection between the early Christian church's eucharistic practice and psychedelic substances, though scholars have their doubts. This article from The Christian Century goes into some of that fascinating story.

For our conversation this evening, we're going to talk about psychedelics and spirituality. Do you have experience with this? If so, what was your experience like? If not, would you try it? Do you feel that a spiritual experience augmented by substances is more or less valid than other spiritual experiences? The discussion starts at 7pm tonight, May 27, at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Sixth Sunday of Easter | May 25, 2025

Sun, 25 May 2025 10:46:41 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Fifth Sunday of Easter | May 18, 2025

Sun, 18 May 2025 10:32:42 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 5/13/25 -- That's the wrong question

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 12 May 2025 18:55:14 GMT

Way back in January 1959, C.S. Lewis published an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which the author and Christian apologist explores the question of the efficacy of prayer. In short, Does prayer work? But Lewis, ever one to make us want to think, says that's the wrong question, as understandable a question as it might be.

"For up till now we have been tackling the whole question in the wrong way and on the wrong level. The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. “Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine — something that functions automatically." This isn't to say that petitionary prayer, i.e. asking God for things, is never appropriate, Lewis says. Only that's a small part of what it means to pray.

So what does it mean our prayers don't get answered? For Lewis, that's not the right question. One reason for that has to do with being created with free will by an omnipotent God, who could do whatever we ask if God wanted to. But that's not the point: "For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to coexist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work."

If the question Does prayer work is the wrong question, then what's the right one? If your prayers are answered, does that mean you are special in God's eyes? And if they're not, does that mean God has forsaken you?

We'll talk all about it in our conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday May 13. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Fourth Sunday of Easter | May 11, 2025

Sun, 11 May 2025 10:36:57 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Third Sunday of Easter | May 4, 2025

Sun, 04 May 2025 13:15:47 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 4/29/25 -- Only forward

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:41:18 GMT

"The world only spins forward." This is a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and I came across it. in all places, at the end of a review of the 2024 movie Conclave , about the sudden death of a pope and the machinations surrounding the election of a successor. Fair warning, lest you get your hopes up, this week's topic isn't about Kushner's play, or the election of a new pope to replace Francis. It's about the quote itself.

The author of the review, which is really a discussion of the film's twist ending, harnesses the quote to suggest something about the possibility of an institution like the Catholic Church evolving and changing. In other words, the quote seems to suggest the idea of progress, So that's what we're going to talk about. In context, that's what I think Kushner is getting at too with the line.

Angels in America is a complex examination of homosexuality and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. With that backdrop, the full quote reads like this: " We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins." Things are changing, Kushner implies here, and for the better. Is that what we mean by progress?

That's really the crux of our topic this week. What does the quote "The world only spins forward" suggest to you? And what does progress mean to us? What does progress look like, whether in our personal lives, our faith lives, in society, or the world itself?

Help us figure it all out in our conversation this week. The discussion start at 7pm tomorrow evening, Tuesday, April 29, at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Second Sunday of Easter | April 27, 2025

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 11:28:45 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 4/22/25 -- WWJI?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:19:43 GMT

I imagine we're all familiar with the slogan WWJD, or, What Would Jesus Do. In fact, it's so familiar that it's turned into a cliched bit of pop culture replicated on wristbands, inspirational posters, bumperstickers, and so on. But have you heard of WWJI, What (or Who) Would Jesus Imitate? OK, true confessions time, I made that one up. But stick with me for a minute.

I got to thinking about this after reading an article at the website Mockingbird titled "Are you a Follower or a Fan: Imitation vs. Participation." The piece starts off by acknowledging the very real challenges of being modern people trying to do as Jesus did. The author writes:

"A few Sundays ago, I listened to a homily that drew a sharp distinction between being a mere fan of Jesus and being a true follower. The preacher’s message was clear: admiration is not enough; commitment is required. And yet, as I sat there, I couldn’t help but think that this framing, while stirring, glossed over the profound complexities of discipleship. After all, what does it truly mean to follow a first-century prophet who renounced self-protection, rejected wealth, and issued radical moral demands? It’s one thing to nod along in agreement; it’s quite another to live as he did. After the service, I mentioned to a fellow congregant that I don’t consider myself a follower of Jesus — just a fan. And only on my better days."

A little further on, the author raises what is a profound and I think fundamental question about the nature of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian. "Is Christianity about imitating Jesus or participating in Jesus? Is it primarily following a moral example or being swept up into an unfolding mystery?" As the author notes, this is about the fundamental tension of Christian life. The idea of imitation is that Christian life is about emulating Jesus, replicating his actions, embodying his virtues, and modeling our behaviors after his. Hence the WWJD paradigm. But there's a problem there. This mindset reduces "Christianity to a moral project focused on individual actions and ethical conduct. While imitation is undeniably valuable, when it becomes the core of the Christian journey, it risks turning faith into little more than a moralistic exercise — a set of rules to follow rather than a living, transformative experience." This approach is also, at its core, a specifically individual exercise. In short, how can I be like Jesus?

Participation, the author writes, is a radically different approach that reframes the Christian experience. "It’s not about striving to mimic Christ’s life, but about engaging in the ongoing mystery of his presence in the world. The believer isn’t just a disciple learning to imitate an ancient figure but a participant in a larger, living story — a story that transcends time and encompasses both the individual and the collective."

While imitation offers a clear moral framework, it risks reducing our faith to a checklist of behaviors. Do these things (what Jesus would do), replicate these actions, and we're set. Participation, the author writes, "pulls believers into something dynamic and ongoing. It’s not about asking 'What would Jesus do?' but 'What is Jesus doing right now?' It’s about recognizing that faith is not just a story to be retold, but a mystery to be lived and actively engaged with in the present."

So where are you in this mix of imitation vs. participation? How different are the two? Does participation mean we discard imitation? Or does participation give meaning to imitation. If imitation is about me, myself, and I, who is participation about? Are you a fan or a follower?

We will wrestle with these questions in our discussion this week. Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday, April 22, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Easter Sunday | April 20, 2025

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 10:58:25 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Palm Sunday | April 13, 2025

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 11:17:44 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 4/8/25 -- As luck would have it

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 17:46:53 GMT

What I really wanted to do here was post a Clint Eastwood meme, to illustrate this week's topic, but I sort of thought the handgun in every single one I found would be in a little bad taste. So instead we get a toddler with a serious expression. But the question still holds: Do you feel lucky?

Luck is one of those things that comes up pretty often in our daily lives and conversations, so I think we tend to take it as something both real and that we take for granted. Some people are lucky, some people aren't. Sometimes we're out of luck, sometimes we luck out. But what is luck anyway? Believe it or not, this is something that sociologists have been arguing about for some time, and that philosophers have explored, but without much resolution. An article at the New York Magazine website goes into this discussion in some really interesting detail:

"There’s something about luck that inspires skepticism or rejoinder. Partially, it’s a question of terms. It’s hard to agree what exactly we’re talking about. The word is slippery, a kind of linguistic Jell-O. The critiques come from left and right, from those who see luck as a mask for privilege and those who see it as an offense to self-made men. Voltaire, with the confidence of the encyclopedist, once declared that one can locate a cause for everything and thus the word made no sense. Others dismiss it as mere statistics, still others as simply a term the godless use for God. It can call to mind an austere medieval manuscript, two-faced Fortuna, one side beaming, the other weeping, ordinary humans clinging to her fickle wheel.

But we can’t quite quit it, either. It’s something you might say you don’t believe in but continuously invoke. We’re up all night to get it, are warned not to push it, are sometimes down on it. It haunts our pop songs and expressions, but it isn’t just some rhetorical holdover, like the bony stub of an ancestral tail. This organ is still in active use."

As the article notes, we can be tempted to dismiss the notion of luck as occurrences that are the product of simple probabilities, even wildly improbable ones. But our minds don't really process the world that way. Rather that see the world through the lens of mathematical probabilities, we experience and understand the world through story and narrative. And luck, good or bad, makes for a powerful plot point.

We're going to talk about this idea of luck in our conversation this week. Is it different than destiny or fate? Is it the hidden hand of God for our against our favor for some inexplicable, at least to us, reason? And, of course, we're going to ask the all-important question: Do you feel lucky? Do ya punk?

Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday April 8, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Fifth Sunday in Lent | April 6, 2025

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 10:24:11 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 4/1/25 -- What a joke!

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:34:47 GMT

It's not every year that our Pub Theo conversations fall on April Fools Day, but here we are. In fact, near as I can tell, the last time this happened was in 2019, you know, those glorious pre-pandemic days before everything started to fall apart and we all lost our senses of humor.

It is sometimes suggested that worship is holy and serious stuff, and that church is no place for jokes. What's your take? How serious, or how lighthearted can we be or should we be? Is there a place for humor in church? Better yet, let's take our questions right to top. In short, does God have a sense of humor? What would you point to as evidence for your answer? And does that tell you anything broader about how you think about God and your relationship with the divine?

There is a long debate about the role of humor in the Christian faith. Seriously, people argue over whether Jesus laughed or not. (For what it's worth, the Bible doesn't offer us any examples of Jesus laughing, let alone smiling, but that doesn't mean he didn't.) Over at the website Patheos, there's an interesting article about irreverence, faith, and what we want our relationship with God to be like. This line from the article resonates: "But we only get a cardboard cutout Jesus in scripture—to see him as a human being, I think some irreverent thoughts. Given that we human beings are flawed, imperfect, and funny to our toes but have perfectionist delusions, irreverence is a universal humanizer."

So in our discussion this evening, we're going to talk about humor and the place of irreverence in our religious and non-religious lives. This conversation will be no joking matter! Join us this evening starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Fourth Sunday in Lent | March 30, 2025

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 10:52:48 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 3/25/25 -- Let's be honest

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 18:36:40 GMT

From an early age we're taught that honesty is the best policy. But is it?

From a social and psychological perspective, the benefits of honesty seem pretty straightforward . Honesty builds trust. This can in turn lead to stronger relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and so on. Likewise, when we are honest with ourselves, we build trust in ourselves which can lead to better mental health and helping you lead a more authentic and more fulfilling life.

But are there circumstances where holding back, or scaling back the honesty, as the XKCD comic above puts it, is the better way forward? In short, is it sometimes better to be less honest, both with others and with ourselves? For example, in a review of a new novel by Emily St. James, Atlantic writer Emma Sarappo reminds us that "Many LGBTQ people face a lifetime of moments that require them to weigh honesty against safety," a dilemma that is particularly acute and dangerous for trans people in this very moment.

We're going to talk about all of this in our conversation this week. What is your relationship with honesty? Are there times in your life where you feel like you've been too honest? More importantly, what does it mean to you to be honest and to live honestly? And how do we do it? What gets in the way?

Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday March 25. The conversation starts at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Third Sunday in Lent | March 23, 2025

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 11:57:30 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 3/18/25 -- Unwelcome prophets?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 19:00:04 GMT

We've been at the whole Pub Theology thing for nearly a dozen years now (we first gathered all the way back in the summer of 2013), and we've covered a lot of ground and a lot of topics in our conversations over that span of time. Sometimes those topics are worth revisiting. I got to thinking about that on Sunday listening to the Gospel reading (Luke 13:31-35) and hearing Jesus refer to Jerusalem as the city that kills its prophets.

And it's true. Prophets get a rough treatment in scripture, what with being ignored, exiled, killed and so on. Even Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, was not particularly interested in hearing what he had to say.

It turns out that this issue has been on our agenda before. Almost exactly six years ago, back in 2019, we had a discussion on the topic of prophets and their often rocky reception. But since we've got some new faces around the dinner table these days, it's worth revisiting this conversation.

As noted earlier, Jesus himself, in the Gospel of Luke, says "no prophet is accepted in his hometown." And in his case, the good people of Nazareth tried to throw him off a cliff. Likewise in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says, "Only in his home town and in his own house is a prophet without honor." And, as already mentioned, in Luke, Jesus describes Jerusalem as the "city that kills the prophets."

What's behind this scorn for prophets anyway? Perhaps it's this: One piece I recently read described the essence of being a prophet as engaging in "denial-free thinking." Or perhaps, as we brought up some weeks ago, maybe it's because they insist on speaking hard truths that people might not want to hear. Maybe those insights have something to do with it.

So for our discussion this week we're going to talk about prophets. What do you think it means to be a prophet in our modern age? Do we even encounter them anymore? What's our reaction? We're familiar with prophets in the religious sense, but what about secular prophets? Do they get the same kind of unwelcome response? Can you think of any in our present day? I'm pretty sure I can.

Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday March 18, beginning at 7 pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford. To get you thinking, here's a link to a long book excerpt which raises some interesting notions about the rejection or acceptance of prophets. I won't vouch for all of the arguments, but it's worth a read if you have the chance.

Second Sunday in Lent| March 16, 2025

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 12:10:31 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 3/11/25 -- Talking about temptations

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 18:42:24 GMT

We're back after a few weeks off to have a conversation about temptations. No, not the classic Motown group pictured above, but temptation, which has been defined as the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise. Or to engage in short-term urges for enjoyment that threaten or endanger long-term goals. Like wanting to save room for dinner, but those chocolate chip cookies are fresh out of the oven and just one won't spoil my supper! In many religious traditions with concepts of temptation, the concept is understood as an inclination to sin, essentially an opening to engage in or entertain sinful actions and desires.

The topic comes to mind thanks to Sunday's reading from the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13) in which following his baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus spends 40 days fasting in the wilderness only to encounter the devil armed with three specific temptations: That Jesus prove his divinity by turning stone to bread to alleviate his hunger; to take up the rulership of all the kingdoms of the world if only he worships the devil; and that he prove he's the Son of God by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple compelling angels to fly to the rescue, catching him before he hits the ground, as the psalms say. Jesus, of course, resists all three temptations.

But none of us is Jesus, and we may not always have such an easy time resisting the temptations that cross our paths on a daily basis. So join us for the conversation this Tuesday, March 10, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford. We'll talk about what temptation means to us, how we encounter it in our lives, and what we do in the face of it. Can you resist?

First Sunday in Lent| March 9, 2025

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 12:25:24 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Ash Wednesday

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 19:19:26 GMT

An invitation to a holy Lent...

Join us in person or by Livestream at 7 p.m. for Ash Wednesday.

Last Sunday after the Epiphany | March 2, 2025

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 03:53:03 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany | February 23, 2025

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:12 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 2/18/25 -- Is common sense enough?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 20:03:36 GMT

Indifference, if not outright hostility, toward religion is not just a feature of our current age, but has been around for quite a while. Humanists, secular philosophers, and atheists of many stripes have long tarred religion with the brush of superstition and ignorance. The quote above, from 18th century French Enlightenment philosopher and writer Paul Thiry Baron d'Holbach, comes out this tradition.

D'Holbach believed that people can use common sense to discover moral principles without needing religion or divine intervention. He thought that people should be just, moderate, and sociable because it makes them feel good, not because it's what a god commands. In his 1772 book Good Sense: or, Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural makes the following claim: "To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.”

At its heart, what d'Holbach puts forward is an alternative theory of the origins of morality. As an advocate of secular morality, and a self-described anti-theist and opponent or religion, d'Holbach and others who have adopted this perspective essentially argue that morality doesn't require religion. It's based on social ties, education, and sympathy. Some say that people shouldn't be motivated by the fear of punishment or the hope of reward after death. In contrast, those who approach morality through a theist lens, i.e. a belief in God (or gods), suggest that without God, morality would just be a social convention without any universal validity beyond cultures or self-interest.

The second chapter of the Epistle to Titus, traditionally attributed to St. Paul though the scholarly consensus casts significant doubt on that attribution today, is essentially guidance to clergy, specifically bishops, for the teaching of "sound doctrine," in other words instruction in what does and does not meet the demands of moral conduct. Titus 2:11-12 roots this in the divine: "For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world,"

Let's talk about this. Is common sense, and common sense alone, sufficient to produce morality, or, as the baron puts it, discover its true principles? Is d'Holbach right, is common sense enough? And if it is, why does it -- both common sense and morality -- seem is such short supply sometimes? Or is morality a consequence of divine authority?

Join us for the conversation this week as we wrestle with the age-old question of where morality comes from. The discussion starts at 7pm Tuesday, Feb. 18 at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 2/11/25 -- Peace vs. good trouble?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 17:57:18 GMT

Without really planning it, we seem to have hit upon something of a theme over the last few weeks of PubTheo conversations. We started with a discussion about speaking truth to power, which led to last week's discussion of allyship and what it means to be an ally. And then, at church at St. Mary's this past Sunday, there were two moments in the service which alluded to a famous prayer that has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi though the author is actually unknown. If you're unfamiliar with it, the prayer starts like this: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace ..."

It continues this way: "Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy." There is more to the text, but for our purposes, this is where we'll leave off, at least for this week.

In the troubled times that we find ourselves in, how does the text of this prayer speak to us? What does it mean to be an instrument of peace? And is peace really what our times are calling for these days? Thinking on that question brought to mind the words of the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, quoted in the illustration for this week's topic.

The above-mentioned quote actually comes from a Tweet Lewis wrote back in 2018, a similarly divisive and troubled time in America's political and civic life. Here's the full text:: "Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

What do you think Lewis meant when he talked about "good trouble" and "necessary trouble"? What was he calling on everyday people to do? Back in 2021, the National Endowment for the Arts posed that question to a group of artists, asking them to reflect on the meaning of good trouble. You can read what they had to say by clicking on this link .

In our conversation this week we're going to talk about the relationship between being asking to be an "instrument of your peace" and being called on to get into good and necessary trouble. How do these two sets of ideas fit together? Are they consistent or are they contradictory? In short, is getting into "good trouble" a way to become an instrument of peace?

Join us for the discussion this Tuesday, Feb. 11, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany | February 9, 2025

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 12:37:32 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 2/4/25 -- What does it mean to be an ally?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:58:39 GMT

During our conversation on speaking truth to power last week, and specifically when we turned to speaking up for others who are vulnerable or in need of compassion from those in positions of power or authority, we touched on the questions of allyship, and what it means to be an ally. Turns out that one of our regulars has some background and experience with these questions, and a passion for the topic, so we're going to explore the ideas in our conversation this week.

Allyship is something that a lot of people us in theory, but have a difficult time putting into practice. One of the central tensions in the ally's relationship to people affected by bias is the champion/assistant dilemma. As this article from the Harvard Business Review explains, the champion model is one where a person of privilege uses that privilege to make the kinds of far-reaching change that the disadvantaged person can't make on their own. In this model "Allies ... shoulder some of that burden, freeing marginalized people to spend less time advocating for themselves and more time living their lives."

By contrast, in the assistant model the ally takes a step back. "In the assistant model, allies serve as helpers on projects led by others. Proponents of this model point out that affected people know best how to advance their own interests. For that reason, allies need to step back and 'pass the mic' to affected people. To the extent allies bring their own ideas and voices to the table, it’s in a clearly subordinate role."

Figuring out whether to act as a champion or an assistant is a thorny choice, and fraught with uncertainty that can prevent a potential ally from doing or saying anything at all. People may worry that their attempts at speaking up will seem performative or even patronizing. Some people are so worried about making mistakes, that they stay silent even when they want to speak up. This fear of doing the wrong thing often prevents people from doing ANYthing.

Prof. Christian van Nieuwerburgh from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Dr. Jummy Okoya from the University of East London wrote a wonderful article that starts with a simple definition: " Allyship is about those who are active in supporting efforts to increase fairness and inclusion in our societies." You can read the full thing, along with their practical guidance about how to be a better ally, by following this link . The steps that they suggest begin with the simple, acknowledging your own privilege, and culminate in taking a stand. There's lots in between.

In our conversation this week. we will discuss what it means to be an ally, and what might prevent us from taking on that role for ourselves. We'll consider levels of allyship and how to respond and do better when we inevitably make a misstep. We will also consider how the skills we currently have can be applied to our journey towards more active and effective allyship. Finally, we'll think about the arenas where allyship might make sense in relation to race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, mental health, disability, and the intersectionality of all these that creates unique experiences of discrimination and privilege.

We've got a lot on our plate this week, so join us for the discussion starting at 7pm Tuesday, Feb. 4 at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany | February 2, 2025

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 13:01:49 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 1/28/25 -- Truth to power

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 19:57:45 GMT

With the deep freeze behind us, at least for now, it's time for us to dig into a weighty topic. Two things nearly coincided last week. On Monday we marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day when our country remembers the civil rights icon and spiritual leader who made the powerful and complicit uncomfortable through the power of his words and witness. And on Tuesday, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C., did the same in her sermon at the post-inauguration prayer service held at Washington National Cathedral, her seat as bishop and spiritual leader.

In the closing of her sermon, Bishop Budde made a simple but direct plea to newly inaugurated Pres. Donald Trump, that he show mercy. That portion of her 15-minute message is worth quoting in full :

"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

It was a deeply Christian plea, informed by the Gospel and reflective of the core teachings of Jesus. And, of course, it generated almost instant criticism and condemnation from the president himself and from his supporters, including others who claim for themselves the mantle of Christian. Trump called Budde a "so-called bishop" and a "radical Left hard line Trump hater" who had brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way."

His supporters said worse. Their condemnations have included charges of heresy and threats of physical harm up to and including death. You can read a very good discussion of all of this, along with the bishop's reaction, in this article from The New York Times .

As Elizabeth Bruenig wrote at The Atlantic , exhortations for mercy are never easy for the powerful to hear. "Trump was outraged by Budde’s remarks, and predictably so: Those vested with an abundance of worldly power should find the radical Christian message of mercy hard to hear, because it demands mildness and leniency of the mighty rather than strength and bombast. ... The Christian faith is careful to exhort the powerful to mercy because mercy is so opposed to the exercise of power."

So we're going to talk about all of this in our conversation this week. Why can it be so hard to speak truth to power? Have you ever found yourself in such a situation where you've had to make a decision about raising uncomfortable truths to those in positions of power or authority? And what do you make of the controversy that the bishop's remarks generated? How is it that such a simple plea for mercy and kindness received such negative backlash?

Join us for the discussion this week, Tuesday Jan. 28. The conversation starts at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Third Sunday after the Epiphany | January 26, 2025

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 12:38:46 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany | January 19, 2025

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:08:21 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services today will be at 9:30 followed by our annual meeting. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 1/14/25 -- Logic, imagination, and what's left to learn

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:35:38 GMT

Your hardworking staff here at PubTheo came across the above quote from Albert Einstein the other day, and it sparked a thought: When was the last time I really exercised my imagination? Much of my day-to-day revolves around task management and following the dictates of a fairly routine schedule. In these circumstances I think I fall back on logic -- Einstein's getting from A to B -- much more so than any real sense of imagination. So when do I exercise my imagination?

Einstein also had this to say about imagination and knowledge: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." A more famous version of this quote appears in a book Einstein wrote in 1931, Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms . "At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact, I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

What is your take on all of this? What role does imagination play in your everyday life? Or in your life in general? Do you see the distinction between logic and imagination that Einstein identifies? What about the idea that imagination is more important than knowledge? What do you think Einstein was driving at? Do you agree? Which is more important in your own life, knowledge or imagination? Would you say that most problems stem from a lack of knowledge, or a lack of imagination?

For a longer discussion of Einstein's perspective on the relationship between knowledge and imagination, this article is worth reading .

Where would you say imagination comes from? Do you consider yourself an imaginative person? Have you ever let your imagination run wild? What was that like for you? Finally, have you ever met anyone that you believed was truly lacking in imagination?

Join us for the conversation this Tuesday evening, Jan. 14, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford. Imagine what a great discussion we'll have!

First Sunday after the Epiphany | January 12, 2025

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:24:38 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 1/7/25 -- Hygge for the new year

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:56:55 GMT

It's January, it's cold, and that means it's cozy season! That also means it's time for hygge , a Danish concept that has become recently popularized, inspiring books, articles, TV series, and even Nordic-noir crime novels. So what does it mean?

According to the Danes, hygge is about taking time away from the daily rush to be together with people you care about -- or even by yourself -- to relax and enjoy life's quieter pleasures. The word dates from around 1800, at least in its current meaning, and other Nordic languages have their own, related, words for the same idea. In short, hygge is often about informal time together with family or close friends.

A Danish government website on Danish culture summarizes hygge like this: "It usually involves sharing a meal and wine or beer, or hot chocolate and a bowl of candy if children are included. There is no agenda. You celebrate the small joys of life, or maybe discuss deeper topics. It is an opportunity to unwind and take things slow." That sounds a lot like some of our Pub Theology sessions.

The cold, dark, and wet climate during long parts of the year encourages Danes to spend time together indoors. Thus, winter is the prime time for hygge. Cold, dark, and wet sounds a lot like winter around these parts as well, so we're going to take our cue from Denmark and spend our discussion time this week getting cozy and answering some hygge-inspired questions.

Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Jan. 7, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

First Sunday of Christmas | December 29, 2024

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:31:32 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Christmas Morning | December 25, 2024

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 13:50:30 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Christmas Eve | December 24, 2024

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 11:51:35 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Fourth Sunday of Advent | December 22, 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 12:23:59 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 12/17/24 -- Time for our Christmas break

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:10:56 GMT

With just one week to go until Christmas, we are taking our annual hiatus to prepare for and celebrate the holidays. We will be back at it on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Until then, we intend to take our cue from Calvin and Hobbes and take some well-deserved naps by the fireplace.

See everyone in the New Year.

Third Sunday of Advent | December 15, 2024

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 13:08:06 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 12/10/24 -- Deep thoughts, deeper thinking

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 19:31:26 GMT

Those of us of a certain age surely remember the old Saturday Night Live bit, "Deep Thoughts" by comedian Jack Handey, a staple of the show back in the 1990s. Handey's collection of deep thoughts was first published in 1992, and little bits would be aired on SNL in between sketches, accompanied by bucolic imagery like that above, and soothing New Age music, It was a fun gag that produced gems like these :

The purpose of a lock is to turn a door into a wall.
When you buy and eat a half chicken, you are secretly sharing a meal with a stranger.
Your car keys have traveled farther than your car.
The object of golf is to play the least amount of golf.
With every new sunrise, there is a new chance. But with every sunset, you blew it.

These were clever, often silly, and sometimes actually thought-provoking. It's been suggested that we can train ourselves to become deeper thinkers by asking ourselves, and really trying to contemplate the answers to, what are essentially unanswerable questions. A classic example of one such question is the familiar Zen koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping." Zen monks were instructed to meditate on and debate such cryptic questions, a typically frustrating and maddening exercise, as a way to acquire, through mental struggle, a deeper understanding of the question itself. That was the path to enlightenment.

This discussion comes from a source we've been turning to lately for inspiration for our weekly conversations, a regular feature at The Atlantic website by Arthur C. Brooks, whose pieces revolve around building our lives. In this article, Brooks suggests that we can improve our emotional health and grow as a person by wrestling with our own questions without clear answers. Questions like, Why am I here? or For what would I give my life? And, he continues, the questions that tend to matter the most to us are typically the least likely to have clear answers. In fact, trivial questions are generally easy to answer with clarity. That's why we like them, and shy away from the hard ones.

Further, he argues, thinking about hard questions is good for us:

"T aking the evidence all together, I’d propose a hypothesis that, as a society, we have become spiritually flabby and psychically out of shape because we haven’t been getting in the reps on challenging existential questions. As much research has documented , anxiety and depression have been exploding in the United States, especially among young adults. I believe that this is not because we’re thinking too much about the hard questions of life, but too little. As I’ve discussed previously , we pass our hours and days hypnotized by the trivia injected into our lives via our tech devices, and are less willing to delve into deeper matters. The elevated levels of sadness and fear are, I believe, at least in part the result of our philosophically sedentary lifestyle. Like the benefits of hard exercise, the short-term discomfort of big questions is necessary to avoid the long-term ill-health that comes from avoiding these questions."

And so, if we're going to treat this like exercise, then here are Brooks' suggestions for to build our philosophical muscles.

First, schedule your mental workout. "Choose a period of time each day—say, 30 minutes—that you can dedicate to weighing tough questions of real importance. First, ban all devices and allow no distractions; then figure out in advance what existential or spiritual challenges you plan to consider. You can use a paragraph or two of philosophy or scripture to focus your mind on a specific question, break it down, and improve your understanding."

Alternatively, go for a long walk. "For some people, a good alternative is a long walk alone, without devices, as a way to give room to your right-brain questions. Philosophers have long advocated this technique—Immanuel Kant was reputedly such a regular walker, to aid his deep thinking, that neighbors set their watches by his passing. Research has shown that walking naturally stimulates creative thinking and facilitates the ability to focus without being distracted."

Then there's this; Invite boredom. "One effect of our screen-centered culture is that we’re never truly bored. This might sound great, like a quality-of-life enhancement. But it isn’t. Experiencing boredom is crucial for abstract reasoning and insight, because it helps stimulate the brain’s default-mode network, the set of brain regions that becomes active when the outside world does not impinge on our mind’s attention. Neuroscientists have shown that such activity is vital for accessing high-level meaning. For this reason, building periods of boredom into our life really matters, because they no longer occur spontaneously."

So what deep thoughts do you have about all of this? Do you take time to ponder the unanswerable questions that swirl around us, or do you prefer to tune them out in favor of the trivial and easily answered? Do you think you would benefit from developing a habit of encouraging deep thinking like that outlined by Brooks above? What kind of unanswerable questions would you focus on in such a practice?

Will be inviting boredom if we take all of this on in our conversation this week? Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Dec. 10, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford, and find out.

Second Sunday of Advent | December 8, 2024

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 11:45:00 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 12/3/24 -- Stuff, stuff, and more stuff

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 16:58:32 GMT

'Tis the season of stuff. Last week was Thanksgiving, and many of us gathered with family or friends to stuff ourselves with a holiday feast. But right on the heels of that came Black Friday, then Small Business Saturday, and now Cyber Monday, when we were encouraged to stuff our shopping carts, both physical and virtual, with even more stuff. Stuff for ourselves, stuff for others, stuff for the sake of stuff.

If you want to take a deeper dive, check out the short, 20-minute film called "The Story of Stuff." The whole thing is interesting, but a central part of the argument is that the pattern of consumption that generates all our stuff is the product of a modern economic system that has only been in place since the 1950s. Between the twin forces of planned obsolescence and the more powerful perceived obsolescence, we are driven to acquire (and then just as quickly discard) more and more and more stuff. And the negative impacts of all of this, on the environment in particular, are largely kept hidden from us.

So let's talk about our relationship with stuff. Are you a minimalist when it comes to stuff, or do like your stuff and plenty of it? What do you think is behind your attitude toward the stuff in your life? Do you ever think about the impact of the stuff you acquire, especially on the environment? But what about its impact on our daily lives? One of the arguments of the film is that our need to acquire more and more stuff forces us to work longer, and harder, to afford the things we want, but at the expense of things that can really make us happy, like spending time in nature, or making connection with others, or having experiences, or just sitting peacefully by ourselves. Do you find this to be true for yourself? Does the pursuit of stuff get in the way of more important things for you? What do you think you can do about that?

Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, Dec. 3, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford. We've got stuff to talk about.

First Sunday of Advent | December 1, 2024

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 12:43:25 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 11/19/24 -- What can we learn from atheists?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:57:23 GMT

For more than a decade now, our conversations have for the most part progressed from a perspective that puts belief in God at the center and builds from there. So let's talk about godlessness instead. We first took on this topic all the way back in 2014, and since that time we've had the pleasure of getting to know and having several atheists join us for our discussions from time to time.

Here are some specific questions:

Do atheists get respect in our culture? Why or why not?
Why don't they "get it" the way that we do? In other words, what the basis for unbelief?
If there is no God, no divine, are our lives cosmically irrelevant? In the big picture, does life have a point? Is there a cosmic, transcendent purpose or meaning to our lives, or is this it?
How willing are we to believe the unbeliever? Listening is one thing, but believing another. Let's talk about the difference.

Finally, here's the really big question: What can people of faith learn from those who profess none? Join us for the conversation this evening, starting at 7pm, at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Twenty-Sixth Sunday | November 17, 2024

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 01:22:21 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 11/12/24 -- Light in the darkness

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 23:31:31 GMT

So we're one week removed from the latest presidential election, and, unsurprisingly, about half of the country is happy with the outcome and about half sees it as little short of a catastrophe. While I am friends with people in both camps, I spend time more often with the later rather than the former. For example, as one colleague put it to me the other day, "I feel like we're headed into dark times." I don't know about you, but that sounds like the basis for a PubTheo topic to me.

The idea of "light in the darkness" is one that we find throughout scripture. For example, in the Gospel of Matthew, (5:14-16) Jesus compares his followers to a light that cannot be hidden. In John 8:12 Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." And in the Old Testament tradition, the prophet Isaiah (42:6) says God has called the people of Israel to be"a light to the nations."

The notion of a light in darkness is a powerful image. J.R.R. Tolkien taps into this in The Fellowship of the Ring in the passage where Galadriel gifts Frodo a glittering crystal phial, proclaiming: "May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out." It's also a familiar image. We're familiar, especially here in the Great Lakes, with sight of a lighthouse on the shore. We're familiar with needing a flashlight to illuminate our way during the next inevitable power outage (thanks DTE). We're familiar with the pull-cord bulb hanging from the basement rafters.

Let's take this idea and talk about it in our conversation this week. What does it mean to you? Where have you looked for light in the darkness when you've needed it, and where do you find it now? What would it mean for you to be a light in the darkness? And does that have particular meaning for us as we look to the four years ahead?

We'll talk all about it in our discussion this Tuesday, Nov. 12, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Twenty-Fifth Sunday | November 10, 2024

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 11:44:31 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

All Saints' Sunday | November 3, 2024

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 11:23:56 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 10/29/24 -- Finding meaning, making meaning

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 19:03:42 GMT

So what is the meaning of life anyway? And no, this is not a reference to the Monty Python movie, so let's all just move along shall we? But before we do, let me recommend the film to you. It's great.

I gave a little mention to this topic last week, and there was an immediate response from one of our regular participants that makes me think there's something for us to talk about here. I had said something about the idea of "finding"meaning in our lives, but our regular straight up pounced on the notion, arguing instead that we should talk about "making" meaning instead. So let's do both!

The idea for the topic came up a couple of weeks ago when I ran across this article at The Atlantic website: "The Meaning of Life is Surprisingly Simple," in which the author. Arthur Brooks, reminded us that those people who believe they know their life's meaning enjoy greater well-being than those who don't. But he acknowledged that it's a lucky few who figure it out early. For the rest of us, he says, there's work to be done. And the search can be difficult and frustrating: "Philosophy is often unhelpful, offering abstract ideas such as Aristotle’s human function or Kant’s “highest good” that are hard to comprehend, let alone put into action." The easiest response, then, may just be to throw up our hands and conclude that the meaning of life is unknowable, at least to us.

This would be a mistake, though, and Brooks offers the reader a suggestion: Make the quest manageable by breaking it down into what he says are three easily digestible steps. These start with an understanding that we can think about finding meaning by assessing our life along the following dimensions. First is coherence, or how events in your life fit together. "This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can fit new developments into your narrative the moment they happen, but you usually are able to do so afterward, so you have faith that you eventually will." Second is purpose, or the existence of goals and aims. "This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something. Think of purpose as your personal mission statement ..." And third is significance, or the sense that your life matters. Together, he describes these as macronutrients: "the elements that we need for a balanced and healthy sense of meaning in life."

With the in mind, let's take a look at Brooks' digestible steps toward figuring out meaning.

Step 1 -- Check your diet. If you have a sense that your life lacks meaning, then take a look at your "macronutrient balance" and ask yourself the following questions:

Do you feel out of control, tossed about in life without rhyme or reason? You might need a better sense of coherence.
Do you lack big plans or dreams or ideas about your future that excite you? If not, that's a purpose issue.
Do you feel like it wouldn't matter if you just disappeared, that the world would be no better off with or without you? That's significance.

Step 2 -- Search in the forest. If you find you have a deficit in one of the above, go look for it in a productive way. The good news for us Pub Theologians is that we may have an already existing spiritual or philosophical outlook that can guide us, like prayer, or meditation, or even therapy. The key, though, is to approach the search the way you would anything that's important to you, by being intentional and doing the work.

Step 3 -- Make sure you don't search too hard. H ere Brooks makes the point that your quest for meaning becomes counterproductive if it gets in the way of your happiness: "If you feel lost in your search for meaning, cut yourself some slack and go back to the basics."

All of this, Brooks acknowledges, stems from the starting assumption that life does in fact have meaning. That's a perspective that not all of us may share, and so that is going to be our starting point for our discussion this week. So, first, do you think that your life has meaning? Even if you're not sure what that might be? Then second, what do you make of the distinction between "finding" meaning and "making" meaning in our lives? Are those really different ideas? Finally, what do you make of Brooks' overall argument here? Do the concepts of coherence, purpose, and significance resonate with you? And do you think Brooks' three simple steps are a a good way to figure it all out?

We'll talk all about it in our conversation this Tuesday evening, Oct. 29, The discussion starts at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Copy of Copy of Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost | October 27, 2024

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 12:31:58 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 10/22/24 -- Tell me a story

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 18:26:39 GMT

Every once in a while I pay attention in church on Sunday. And every once in a while, when I'm paying attention in church, I also pay attention to the sermon. This last was one such Sunday.

For the past several weeks in our Sunday lectionary we've been reading passages from the Book of Job. In his sermon, Fr. Andy raised a point that made me think we might have a good discussion topic on our hands. In a nutshell, Fr. Andy suggested that Job didn't know whose story he was in. Job believed that he was the author of his own story, and thus was in a place where he could demand that God account for why his life had been ruined and why he was suffering. But the story here wasn't Job's, but God's. Rather than God being a character in Job's story, Job was one in God's.

That's an interesting idea to contemplate. And so here is how we're going to approach it. Do you know what story you are in? Is it your own, or is it someone else's? What is the difference? And what are the implications for how we think about how we live and move through the world? I mean, is life just one big "choose your own adventure" story, or is there something more to it? To bring things full circle, is God a character in your story, or are you one in God's?

We'll talk all about it in our conversation this week. Join us for the discussion this Tuesday, Oct. 22, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Copy of Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost | October 20, 2024

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 12:08:51 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 10/15/14 -- Willie and wisdom from unexpected sources

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:31:57 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we had a conversation about wisdom, what it is, where it comes from, whether we consider ourselves wise, and so on. I was thinking about this when I ran across an article about a book country music legend Willie Nelson wrote nearly 2o years ago. Nelson, now 91, wrote The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart, when he was a young man of 72. As you can guess from the title of book, Nelson's philosophy and outlook owe a lot to Eastern religious traditions.

According to the article I ran across ( you can read it by clicking on this link ), Nelson, who was raised in Protestant churches in Abbott, Texas, began to suspect that the songs he was writing as a teenager, about experiences and heartbreaks that he was too young to know firsthand, might have been the consequence of past-life experiences. He came to the conclusion that he had led many past lives. “I haven’t run into anything I haven’t seen or heard before. I also feel as if I can put myself in the place of just about everyone I see, and that gives me the feeling I’ve been in their shoes before.”

Beyond his belief in reincarnation, Nelson also came to think of the world's many religions as "a thousand paths to a single destination,” with the goal of bringing us closer to the divine. In short, Nelson has a lot of views that are consistent with some of what we've talked about in our PubTheo conversations over the last 11 years. So we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of the nuggets of wisdom that Nelson shares in his book, and see what we have to say about them. The following is taken from Nelson's book and borrowed from the article mentioned above:

The easiest mistake on earth is to forget to appreciate what you have right now. Happiness exists at just one time. And that time is now. You can be happy about how yesterday turned out, but you can’t be happy yesterday. You can only be happy today, this hour, this minute … now.
Slow down. Not just your body but your mind. God is all around us, but it takes stillness to know his message.
Breathing is its own form of meditation. Breathe from your chest; breathe from your gut; breathe from your heels. Breathing can calm you and put you in touch with your own spirit. It can deepen your contact with the world around you. If you concentrate and listen to your own breathing, what you will hear is the sound of God.
As soon as you admit to yourself that everything good you do comes back to you twenty times over, then your life will change in incredible ways. Doing things because they’re the right thing to do—and not for some tangible gain—will ultimately reward you in better ways than money, power, or fame.
Connections to those around you, to the world around us all, and to the universe that stretches into the great beyond are things that define us.
The older I get, the more I realize it’s never too early to start appreciating the people in your life. If you love your family, it’s essential that you tell them. If you can make someone feel better with just a few words, why wouldn’t you use them?
Love is what I live on. Love is what keeps me going. When in doubt, I try to remind myself that the path to God is paved with love.

Join us at Casa Real in downtown Oxford on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 7pm as we consider the wisdom of Willie Nelson. Our discussion will start there and then we'll see where else it wanders.

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost | October 13, 2024

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 13:11:42 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 10/8/24 -- When were the good old days?

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 17:00:16 GMT

About 15 years or so ago I used to listen to a Detroit-based Gothic country band called Blanche. They had two great records back in the 2000s and then kinda faded away. You can still find their music various places online, but they haven't released an album since 2007, and as far as I know, they are defunct. It's a shame, because they had some really great songs.

One line from one of their songs -- I couldn't tell you which anymore -- has really stuck with me though, and the sentiment behind it speaks directly to our discussion topic this week. The line goes something like this: "I dream in sepia." I hints at dreams and thoughts of days gone by, our memory of them faded and obscured but sweetly nostalgic. It's a dream of life as it used to be. In short, the good old days. But when exactly were those? And who exactly were those days good for? Why do we pine for some idealized vision of the past?

Not surprisingly, scripture has something to contribute to this conversation. In Ecclesiastes 7:10 the writer (tradition attributes authorship to King Solomon) advises: "Do not say 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." Why do we often hold this sentiment that the old days were better? Is it sometimes true? Why might the writer of Ecclesiastes suggest that this is not a wise question to ask? And what do you think of when you think of the good old days?

That's the focus for our conversation this evening. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford and tell us what you think.

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost | October 6, 2024

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 11:41:41 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Pub Theology 10/1/24 -- Hurricanes, floods, and suffering

ptrumbor@oakland.edu (Peter Trumbore) — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 17:12:51 GMT

Hurricane Helene brought devastating wind and flood damage to several Southeastern states last week. Especially hard hit were communities in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, including the city of Asheville. As of this writing, nearly 90 people have been reported killed across six states, with thousands more displaced. Entire towns have reportedly been "erased" by the power of floods and mudslides, and much of the region remains inaccessible due to destroyed roads and rail lines.

With this in mind, it's worth thinking about one of the great stories of suffering that appears in Scripture. Of course, I'm referring to the Book of Job, which we will start reading next week as part of the Sunday lectionary at St. Mary's. As writer and United Church of Christ pastor Bruce Epperly puts it , the Book of Job is "one of the greatest and most challenging descriptions of both God and the human condition. Job is every man, every woman, and every person who faces unexpected and unanticipated life-changing suffering."

The Book of Job, Epperly suggests, represents an opportunity for us to think about the phenomenon of suffering -- not just ours but that of others as well -- and what that means for our understanding of our relationship with God.

Epperly continues: "Life is difficult. Pain happens. We don’t know its source but we must endure or make the best of it. ... Job invites [us] to reflect on the universality of suffering. ... No one is immune from suffering of body, mind, spirit, or relationships. It’s only a matter of time. Suffering can ennoble or destroy us. We never fully know our character until we face unwarranted and unexpected suffering. As Viktor Frankl suggests, however, we are called to be worthy of our suffering, and that’s one of the themes of Job. Despite his pain, he must seek to be as moral and noble as possible. For Job, this will mean challenging God’s own justice."

So what are we to take away from all of this? Is God capricious and arbitrary in his omniscience? We might fear such a God, but how on earth could we love or worship him? What is God's role in the suffering we, and others, experience? This is all worth thinking, and talking about, as Epperly notes, "suffering challenges our vision of God and the goodness of the universe."

Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, Oct. 1, beginning at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost | September 29, 2024

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:34:54 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost | September 22, 2024

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 10:21:07 GMT

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost | September 15, 2024

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 11:54:47 GMT

All are welcome and invited to worship with St. Mary’s this Sunday. We have two services, an 8:30 a.m. service in the Church building, and a 10 a.m. service in the Outdoor Chapel. While we would love to see you at the church this morning, we also invite you to participate via our live-stream for our 8:30 service.

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost | September 8, 2024

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:45:44 GMT

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost | August 18, 2024

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 11:20:00 GMT

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost | August 11, 2024

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:41:00 GMT

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost | August 4, 2024

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 09:38:00 GMT

All are welcome and invited to worship with St. Mary’s this Sunday. We have two services, an 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. in the Church building. While we would love to see you at the church this morning, we also invite you to participate via our live-stream at 10:00 AM.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost | July 28, 2024

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 10:41:00 GMT

Pub Theology 5/28/24 – Two topics for the price of one!

Tue, 28 May 2024 15:59:00 GMT

What better way to close out this current season of Pub Theology than with a topic double feature. In keeping with the theme, we’re bringing back a golden oldie from the earliest years of PubTheo conversations to warm things up, and pairing that with a fresh, new feature as the nightcap. So let’s get to it.

This first topic is almost exactly 10 years old, dating to May 27, 2014. And it’s a pretty simple one to lay out. What is more important: a) seeking and saying the truth; or b) toeing the party line? We’re often told that honesty is the best policy, but is it? Are there times or circumstances when it’s better to be less than completely honest? Let’s talk about it.

We can blame (or credit) Jesus for our second topic. In Matthew’s gospel (Chapter 6 NRSV) , Jesus is instructing his disciples on a host of points, from giving alms, to how to pray, to the dangers of love of wealth. Then, beginning in verse 25, he turns to worry.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? … And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?” After all, he says, the birds of the air neither sow nor reap and yet are fed. The lilies of the field wear no clothing yet are beautiful. In short, God takes care of all or it, so don’t worry about it. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

We’ve discussed in other conversations the annoying habit that Jesus has in the gospels of speaking indirectly or in metaphor (parables anyone?) rather than making his points plain. But here he is, essentially telling his followers, and us, not to worry about because God has it all under control. So how do you understand or apply this text today? Is it perhaps sound first century advice for a rural wandering band of disciples, but impossible or even unwise in modern times?

Join us this evening for our last conversation before we take our usual summer break. The discussion starts at 7pm tonight at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 5/21/24 — Team players, teamwork, and tug o’ war

Mon, 20 May 2024 19:03:00 GMT

Every week we start our discussion with an ice breaker question or two. Originally, the idea was to make everyone comfortable with talking and sharing their thoughts with each other before diving into the evening’s topic. After 11 years of Tuesday conversations, though, we’re all pretty much comfortable talking about pretty much anything. But the ice breakers remain.

And that’s a good thing, because as we were chatting about the ice breaker last week, one of our number chimed in with something like: “Wow, that would make a great discussion topic.” Others around the table nodded in assent, so here we are. Last week’s ice breaker is the heart of this week’s conversation.

The question was a simple one: Do you consider yourself a team player? Why or why not? Not surprisingly, we proceeded to take a superficially simple question and highlight a host of the complexities and nuances embedded within it. So that’s what we’re going to focus on in this week’s conversation. Not just are you a team player, but what makes a good team, and what then makes a good team player? What are our experiences in working with others as part of a team, whether at work, in social settings, sports, voluntary organizations like churches, and so on? Recognizing that it’s never only one or the other, have our experiences been mainly positive or mainly negative? And what does teamwork mean to each of us?

Finally, the game of tug o’ war is often thought of as one of the classic demonstrations of the power of teamwork. Simply put, if everyone pulls together you’ve got a good chance of winning, even if the other side has more physically powerful players. So what do you think of the idea of tug o’ war as an exemplar for teamwork? Is it really as simple as I just made it out to be? Or is there more to it? And then think about tug o’war as a larger metaphor. After all, what is it if not being pulled one way or another? Are there times when you’ve felt caught in a tug o’war? Why was that, and what helped resolve the issue for you?

We’ll talk about all of this and likely more in our conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday May 21. The discussion starts at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 5/14/24 — Getting stuck and unstuck

Mon, 13 May 2024 17:46:00 GMT

“Hallo, are you stuck?” That’s the question Rabbit poses to Winnie-the-Pooh when he finds the plump bear wedged solidly in his front door following a visit that featured a little too much honey from Rabbit’s larder. Pooh, of course, first denies that he is in fact stuck. “‘N-no,’ said Pooh carelessly. ‘Just resting and thinking and humming to myself’.” But both he and Rabbit know the truth. Pooh is well and truly stuck, and there’s not much he can do about it.

I was thinking about this the other day when confronted with a really big task but no clear (at least to me) way to dive into it. Like Pooh, I felt stuck. Like Pooh, there was no going back, but I also saw no easy way forward. In my head I had become, in Pooh’s words, “a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness.”

So, with a nod of appreciation to A.A. Milne, the author of “Winnie the Pooh,” we’re going to talk about both getting stuck, and getting unstuck, in our conversation this week.

Have there been times in your life when you’ve felt stuck? What was that like, and what do you think was the cause? Was it a result of something you did or choices you made? For example, Pooh get’s stuck in Rabbit’s front door because he ate too much of his host’s honey during an unexpected visit. Pooh’s predicament is of his own making, as Rabbit points out: “It all comes,” said Rabbit sternly, “of eating too much. I thought at the time,” said Rabbit, “only I didn’t like to say anything,” said Rabbit, “that one of us was eating too much,” said Rabbit, “and I knew if wasn’t me,” he said.

And when you’ve found yourself stuck, in whatever circumstance or whatever that means to you, how have you managed to free yourself from that condition? How do you get your stuck self unstuck? Pooh himself could see no solution. But with time (a full week of no meals) and the help of some friends, (Christopher Robin, Rabbit, and all Rabbit’s friends and relations) Pooh managed to get out of the hole and on with the rest of his adventures. Such as they were.

We’re going to talk about getting stuck, being stuck, and how we get out of it in our discussion this week. Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, May 14, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 5/7/24 — Many paths, one destination?

Mon, 06 May 2024 17:27:00 GMT

“If God truly loves the world, why wouldn’t God create as many paths as there are people?” That’s the question posed by the Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes, a biblical scholar and pastor in the United Church of Christ.

Elnes describes himself as a Christian Pluralist. In many ways this approach to the Christian faith is very different than the idea of a faith based on certainty that we discussed last week. Fellow UCC pastor Roger Adams, in making a case for Christian Pluralism , contrasts it with the kind of exclusivist perspective that last week’s topic referenced, while acknowledging the potential attractiveness of such a faith system.

“Exclusivists are certain that their religion is the one true faith and the only way to salvation. By its nature, exclusivism is socially divisive, as it regards people with different beliefs as wrong—at best mistaken or confused, at worst sinful or evil. Such absolute certainty about beliefs is fragile. It can be shattered by doubts and disagreements, which therefore must be suppressed. Nevertheless, an exclusivist faith community can be very attractive, offering members clarity in the face of life’s complexities, confirmation of one’s social acceptability, and assurance of one’s righteous superiority over outsiders.”

Christian Pluralism, Adams continues, “acknowledges limits and fallibility, and thus accepts that others’ religions may also be true. Note the ‘may’ in that sentence.”

Adams clarifies that this perspective does not claim that all religions are equally true, or that all faiths are the same beneath the surface. Rather, it holds that other religions may contain some truth, just as we believe our own does. “Many peoples in many times and places have struggled to understand existence and have sensed the presence of the Divine. Perhaps we could learn from their insights. Surely, we should not be so arrogant as to think that God has revealed Godself only to one group at one unique time and place.”

Elnes, however, argues that these separate paths are ultimately leading toward the same destination: “Christian pluralism understands that the world’s perennial faiths are like paths up a mountain. While the paths are very different lower on the mountain, they become increasingly close as they approach their highest level of actualization.” Blogger Glenn Harrell makes a similar point, arguing “there are indeed many paths to God and many of these paths take the traveler considerable distances from the destination. Some people will travel their lifetime and yet never arrive before their eventual death and departure from this earth.”

In our discussion this week we’re going to talk about this idea of Christian Pluralism and how we feel about the notion of there being many paths to God. Do you agree with this perspective? What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of this way of thinking? What objections might we raise to this notion of Christian Pluralism? After all, didn’t Jesus himself say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

Join us for the conversation Tuesday evening, May 7, beginning at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 4/30/24 — Certainty and a boat in the fog

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 17:18:00 GMT

The topic of doubt has come up over and over again in our conversations. That’s not really a surprise given that we’ve been having these discussions for 11 years now. But I’m not sure we’ve ever really talked about the idea of certainty.

Generally speaking, when we talk about certainty we think about it as the state of being free from doubt, of being completely confident about something. There’s often an element of objective proof in the mix as well. So what kind of things are you certain about? More interestingly, are there things you were once certain of but you’ve had a change of mind about? In other words, how certain are you about the very concept of certainty?

Since this is Pub Theology, let’s turn the conversation to questions of faith. In his 2000 novel Jayber Crow , the author Wendell Berry has this to say: “But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a boat, in the fog, in the dark.” As a way of thinking about faith, this is a far cry from a faith system based on certainty. Certainty of salvation, certainty that there is but one path to the sacred, certainty about doctrine, and so on.

What does Berry’s metaphor mean to you? How do you understand what he is saying with this sentence? And how does this conception of faith compare to a certainty-based faith? For some, certainty and faith are opposite ends of a spectrum.

Former United Methodist pastor Martin Thielen argues that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. “I hold many strong beliefs about the life of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and other crucial Christian affirmations. But when religious people are uncompromisingly absolute about all their beliefs, when they cannot see beyond black and white, especially on secondary issues, they are practicing unhealthy religion. The fact is, we are not God. We do not know everything.”

But as Thielen notes, a lot of Christians have a problem accepting ambiguity. “They want their belief system to be certain, beyond question; and they often punish those who disagree with their pronouncements.” But there are hazards lurking in such faith systems. “One of the many problems with arrogant and closed-minded, absolutist religion is that it makes people intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their rigid positions.”

With this as our starting point, our conversation this week will focus on the concept of certainty and absolutism in our faith lives and in our lives more generally. Join us Tuesday, April 30 for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 4/23/24 — Just one word …

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 17:07:00 GMT

April is considered Earth Month, and Monday, April 22, was Earth Day. So it seems fitting that we should devote our conversation this week to questions of our relationship with the earth and how we care for, or don’t, God’s creation.

The classic line from the film, “The Graduate,” referenced above, is a great launching point for this topic. Plastic was first created in 1907, but production on a global scale only began in the 1960s. What was initially touted as a miracle invention has in the last 70 or so years become a global scourge. According to some estimates, the world produces around 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year. Every day, 2,000 truckloads of it is dumped into the ocean, rivers and lakes. And the manufacturing process itself has been identified as a major source of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

To mark Earth Day Sunday, the ecumenical organization Creation Justice Ministries created a resource for congregations titled Plastic Jesus: Real Faith in a Synthetic World . The effort is “designed to help congregations think more deeply about the ways that plastics impact their lives and God’s creation. It is also intended to equip people of faith to take actions to address this epidemic in faithful and practical ways.”

As Creation Justice Ministries points out, plastics, which are ubiquitous to our world, would be completely alien to our foreparents in our faith. “It is a reminder that, as Dr. Ellen Davis has said, we in the present-day western world have more distance from the world of the Bible than any other culture in history. That’s not just in terms of time, but also in terms of technology, attitudes and disconnection from the non-human world around us.”

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the Episcopal Church of the Nativity has developed a ministry called Zero Waste Church , encouraging other churches and congregations to deepen their faith through care for creation. The Rev. Stephanie Allen, rector of Nativity, frames the issue of plastics theologically: “Plastic is a sacrament for our god of convenience.”

Creation Justice Ministries goes further and in the process, poses questions that we will take up in our discussion this week: “Justice for creation requires a rethinking of our relationship to plastics. Is it enough that we recycle and find alternatives to single-use items to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills? How do we account for the fact that plastics are often produced in historically oppressed communities so that their very production harms the health of Black, Brown and poor White communities? Do we even have the means to remove enough plastic from our rivers, lakes and the ocean to preserve the bioregions made vulnerable by plastic waste?”

To put it another way, what might need to happen for the world to repent from its dependence on plastic?

We’ll talk about plastics, Earth Day, and a whole lot more in our conversation this week, Tuesday, April 24. Join us for the discussion beginning at 7 pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 4/16/24 — Adventure awaits!

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 18:52:00 GMT

Every once in a while we have a week where there just aren’t any good or obvious topics easily to hand. This is one of those weeks.

When this happens, we turn our conversation into an exercise in open-mic, freestyle discussion. In short, we can talk about anything anyone wants to talk about. As usual, we’ll open things up with some ice breakers and conversation starters, but the rest of our time will be an opportunity for us to choose our own adventure.

Join us for the adventure this evening staring at 7 pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 4/9/24 — Believing and seeing

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 18:16:00 GMT

This past Sunday was the Second Sunday of Easter, and that meant we were treated to one of those classic biblical stories which has firmly rooted itself in the cultural cortex of believers and non-believers alike. Yes, we’re talking about the story of “Doubting Thomas.”

The story, as related in John’s Gospel, 20:19-31, goes this way. Following the crucifixion, Jesus’s disciples have locked themselves behind closed doors, hiding from the same religious authorities who had put their leader to death just days earlier. The resurrected Jesus then appears to them, they recognize him and rejoice, Jesus blesses them, and then goes on his way.

Thomas (called the Twin) wasn’t with the rest of the disciples at the time, and when they later tell him that they had seen the Lord, he refuses to buy it. And this is where he earns the moniker Doubting Thomas: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Hearing this in church on Sunday got us thinking about the nature of belief, more specifically, why we believe what we believe. Do we, like Thomas, require tangible proof in order to believe something? Or to believe in someone? Is seeing believing for you?

This is a topic that we’ve spent some time talking about before, but it is worth revisiting. Way back in 2016 we asked whether belief, and the flip side, disbelief, was a matter of choice. In other words, if we can choose to believe in the absence of proof, can we also choose to disbelieve in the presence of proof? Or do we take whatever evidence is there and shape it to fit with our preconceived notions?

This brings to mind the 2003 documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. One of the lessons that McNamara shares, learned from his many years of service in and out of government both before and during the Vietnam War, is this: Belief and seeing are both often wrong. In short, we see what we want to believe.

We’ll be talking about all of this in our conversation this week, Tuesday, April 9. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 4/2/24 — Who are you in this story?

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 19:15:00 GMT

Last week was Holy Week, which means we’ve finally made it through the penitential season of Lent and into an Easter season of resurrection and renewal. But before we look ahead to the sunnier spring days approaching, let’s spend a little time reflecting on the week just past.

Holy Week starts with triumph and ends with triumph, but sandwiches a whole lot of tragedy there in between. Jesus with his disciples enters Jerusalem to the cheers and jubilation of the crowds on Palm Sunday. On Thursday he shares a final meal with his friends, who can’t be bothered to stay awake with him while he prays, and then one turns him in to the authorities for arrest. On Friday Jesus is dragged before a bloodthirsty public, tortured and executed while his friends ( save for the women closest to him ) deny and abandon him. Then, finally, on Sunday comes the ultimate victory of the resurrection.

An article published at mbird.com describes the events described above as “whiplash week,” and I think that’s a really apt analogy. “Holy Week might as well be called Whiplash Week. We move from the joyful celebration of Palm Sunday, to the deepest despair of Good Friday, then back to the elation of Easter in quick succession. There is nothing mild or moderate about these events. The pendulum swings fiercely.”

The article linked to above, as well as this one which reminds us that while Jesus’ male disciples had gone off into hiding after the crucifixion, the women were still there on Friday and Saturday, getting things done, gives us an opportunity to find ourselves in the story of Holy Week. Who do we identify with, and which side are we on?

There are lots of options for us to consider. Are you part of the crowd that welcomes Jesus into Jerusalem, paving his way with palm fronds, cloaks on the ground, and shouts of joy? Or are you in the crowd calling for his blood at the end of the week? Or are you there for both? Are you Pilate, dodging responsibility and washing your hands of the whole messy affair? Are you with the disciples basking in the adoration of the crowds, or at dinner expressing shock that anyone would betray their master? Do you fall asleep while Jesus prays, then run for the hills when the soldiers show up? Or are you with the women, quietly getting things done while the men disappear, rewarded with the first glimpse of the risen Christ?

Who are you in the story? We’ll talk all about it in our conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday April 2. Join us of the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

Pub Theology 3/19/24 — What does it mean to be free?

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 19:04:00 GMT

Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places. This week it comes from one of my favorite webcomics, Existential Comics, which describes itself as “A philosophy comic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief in an absurd world. Also jokes.” This week’s comic addresses an age-old question, which is the topic of our conversation this week. What does it mean to be free?

If you search that question online, these are some of the answers that you get:

I don’t know if any of those are terribly satisfying. So we’ll start where we often do when we have a topic like this, with definitions. So what does the word “free” mean to you? But, more importantly, do you consider yourself to be free, and if so, in what way or ways? If you don’t consider yourself free, what stands in the way? Is freedom something you can achieve, or not?

Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, March 19, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.

St Mary's In-The-Hills

Second Sunday of Easter | April 12, 2026

Christ is Risen.

The Lord is Ris en Indeed.

Pub Theology 4/7/26 -- Time to flip some tables?

Easter Sunday | April 5, 2026

Easter Vigil

Good Friday | April 3, 2026

Maundy Thursday | April 2, 2026

This is a subtitle for your new post

The Heart of the Mystery

A Word from Hans Urs von Balthasar

Pondering Glory

What does glory look like? ﻿

Palm Sunday | March 29, 2026

Fifth Sunday in Lent | March 21, 2026

Wait for the Lord

Exercising patience.

"The Jews"

How do we talk about our Jewish neighbors? ﻿

Pub Theology 3/10/26 -- Tempus Fugit

Third Sunday in Lent | March 8, 2026

Living With Uncertainty

What do we do when we don't know what to do?

Second Sunday in Lent | March 1, 2026

Living Faithfully, Acting Bravely

Reflecting on Seven Years

Pub Theology 2/24/26 -- It's an illusion

First Sunday in Lent | February 22, 2026

Ashes and Honesty

This is us.

Last Sunday after Epiphany | February 15, 2026

Invitation to a Holy Lent

Rem ember, you are dust.

Pub Theology 2/10/26 -- Yes to acts of kindness, but why random?

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany | February 8, 2026

Which Borders are Christian?

Where Did Early Christians Think Their Borders Were?

Pub Theology 2/3/26 -- "Deadbots" and the "digital-afterlife industry"

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany | February 1, 2026

Praying in Unsafe Times

"...Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances..."

Third Sunday after Epiphany | January 25, 2026

A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart

Sheep in the Midst of Wolves

Pub Theology 1/20/26 -- The arc of the moral universe

Second Sunday after Epiphany | January 18, 2026

Pub Theology 1/13/26 -- Hope in troubled times?

First Sunday after Epiphany | January 11, 2026

Second Sunday after Christmas | January 4, 2026

Christmas Eve | December 24, 2025

Fourth Sunday in Advent | December 21, 2025

Third Sunday in Advent | December 14, 2025

Pub Theology 12/9/25 -- The Holy Family has been detained

Second Sunday in Advent | December 7, 2025

Pub Theology 12/2/25 -- The allure of silence

First Sunday in Advent | November 30, 2025

Last Sunday after Pentecost | November 23, 2025

Pub Theology 11/18/25 -- Jesus ex machina

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost | November 16, 2025

Pub Theology 11/11/25 -- Spicing up the leftovers

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost | November 9, 2025

Pub Theology 11/4/25 -- There's nothing easy about this

All Saints' Day | November 2, 2025

Twentieh Sunday after Pentecost | October 25, 2025

Pub Theology 10/21/25 -- The burdens we carry

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 19, 2025

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 12, 2025

Pub Theology 10/6/25 -- Separating church and hate

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost | October 5, 2025

Pub Theology 9/30/25 -- Misquotes and money

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 28, 2025

Pub Theology 9/22/25 -- Stories and questions about stories

Fifthteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 21, 2025

Pub Theology 9/16/25 -- Dealer's choice

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 14, 2025

Pub Theology 9/9/25 -- Time for a change of scenery

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost | September 7, 2025

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 31, 2025

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost | Aug 24, 2025

What does glory look like?

How do we talk about our Jewish neighbors?