Being Transformed by Renewing Our Mind
A sermon preached November 9, 2025. Rebecca Nancy and I will be at the funeral of Nancy’s 29 year-old niece Rebecca who died of heartbreak 6 weeks after a tractor trailer killed her husband riding his bicycle. Gospel Now, in today’s assigned Gospel reading, some rich people who
Being Transformed by Renewing Our Mind
He designed a tree that would serve Jesus not as a strawman that is easily blown down, but as a formidable target — not unlike God’s creation of Goliath.
intertextual
The lens of Jesus's wisdom story about the Lost Son in Luke 15 illuminates Psalm 34 and 2 Corinthians 5 — these three scriptures are assigned readings in for Year C Lent 4 lectionary of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Here are two reinterpretations of Psalm 34
More Like Jesus
From Rose (the anonymous anointer in the Pharisee’s home) to a choir from first-century Philippi to John Donne's iambic pentameter — does making the sign-of-the-cross mean anything?
Lyrics
In the old-fashioned style of the camp meeting revival songs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, here's my adaptation of a 1910 lyric by Ada Blenkhorn — find out a bit more about her here: https://hymnary.org/person/Blenkhorn_Ada. Ada's text followed a meter
Biblical Theology
Law (torah) appears 10 times in the latter portion of Psalm 119 (verses 105 to 176) — here are 32 theological implications about Yahweh from those verses. As I tease out these theological implications, I will employ my preferred translation of torah (tôrâ) as "code of conduct": Psalm 119.
Bible
Here are the big ideas from 30 psalms from a preaching series in 2024, as our congregation read through the 150 psalms in 30 Sundays: 3 — When your own flesh & blood want you dead. 9 — I can praise Yahweh even when suffering disrupts the basic alphabet of my life.
Liturgy
Here is a sampling of verses about the marginalized, arranged in five couplets which can be used as a call-and-response creed. New Living Translation (NLT) © 2015 Tyndale. Aligning with God’s Truth He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and
Vocation
DWYL As-Long-As-Your’re-Happy . . . Follow-Your-Heart . . . Be-True-To-Yourself . . . Believe-In-Yourself . . . Live-Your-Truth . . . Be-Your-Best-Self . . . Do-What-You-Love — the aphorisms of our day are elegant. They sound like beautiful advice. They’re certainly enticing. Who wouldn’t want to be their best self? Who wouldn’t want to do what they love? Who wouldn’t want what makes them