God’s life and our lives are bound together, as a vine with branches, as a body with members. So corporate are we that no one can give a cup of cold water to the least person in the world without gi… — Rufus Jones
by Ken Sehested
Gracious One, who jealously guards the lives of those at every edge, we lift our heavy hearts to your Mercy.
We live in a fretful land, anxious over the ebbing away of privilege, fearful that strangers are stealing our birthright.
Read more ›Selected by Ken Sehested
Dispute over the fate of immigrants is at least as old as ancient Israel’s covenant documents,
though the word is commonly translated in English as “strangers” and “aliens.”
Below is a sampling of relevant biblical texts.
Deut. 10:19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Read more ›2 July 2015 • No. 28
¶ Invocation. “With good pleasure, in the beginning, the Beloved aspired all that now breathes. Then again, in the Lovely One, even Christ Jesus, the Wind of Heaven confounds the wail of rancor. Come, heaven! Come, earth! With mercy so tender, adopted in splendor, all bloodletting malice shall melt into praise.” (Continue reading “Good Pleasure,” a litany for worship inspired by Ephesians 1:3-14.)
¶ “Why is it that when we talk to God we’re said to be praying, but when God talks to us we’re schizophrenic?” —Lily Tomlin
Read more ›by Ken Sehested,
Text: 2 Kings 6:8-23
The text we’ve just read is one of my favorites. The king of Aram—basically what is today modern Syria—is frustrated because his army’s maneuvers seem to be anticipated in every instance by the Israelite army. He’s losing every strategic advantage. Before he thought his generals were simply losing their edge. But the evidence now is overwhelming: He’s got a security breach; a spy in their midst; a mole inside his intelligence operation. Hackers have penetrated his firewalls. Wikileaks is broadcasting his campaigns.
So the King calls together the joint chiefs of staff. He demands to know the source of this security breach.
Read more ›26 June 2015 • No. 27
¶ Invocation. A different “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” (Since I Lay My Burden Down). —Staple Singers
¶ Pride history. While posting this edition, news of the US Supreme Court’s decision validating the right for same-sex couples to marry. [photo cap: Jacob Kerr, Huffington Post]
This news comes only days after another milestone moment: “Nearly 46 years after powerful protests there galvanized the modern gay rights movement, New York City's historic Stonewall Inn has been granted official landmark status. It was June 28, 1969, when police raided the Greenwich Village bar that served gay clientele in an era of intolerance toward homosexuality.” —Deirdre Fulton, “Stonewall Inn, Celebrated Birthplace of Modern Gay Rights Movement, Gets Landmark Status”
by Ken Sehested
Let praise leap from the lungs, ascend the throat, rattle the teeth and flutter the tongue. The Blessed Haunt of Zion calls out to all flesh. To this Embrace, everything that has breath shall come. The God who lingers in slave quarters assails every Pharaoh’s palace:
Let my people go! Proclaim liberty throughout the land!
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
In the surge writing following the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the most significant may be Roxane Gay’s “Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof.” (Stacey Patton has a similar piece in The Washington Post, "Black America should stop forgiving white racists.") I think it most significant not because I agree but because it states what so many feel because of a culturally-warped reading of Scripture.
Gay realizes that this counterfeit forgiveness is a form of cruelty to victims. All she says is true—but not true enough.
Read more ›18 June 2015 • No. 26
¶ Invocation. “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want / Green pastures rise and from the font / Flow waters, ever gentle, to surround me / My soul restored, my heart aflame / My feet will walk and for that Name / My lungs will lift to sing, Hallelujah. —Ken Sehested, first verse of new lyrics (adapted from from Psalm 23) to Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah.”
¶ Graduation season. The recent vicarious experience of friends’ delight (and a wee bit of anxiety) at their children’s graduation pivots make me recall my own emotions in that season from some years ago, including a poem, “On the flow of tears.”
Read more ›“New faces: Charlotte’s Growing Interfaith Community” sponsored by Mecklenburg Ministries, Programa Esperanza, Community Relations Committee and International Ministries
Tuesday, 13 November 2001, First United Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC
by Ken Sehested
In the 19th chapter of the gospel of Luke, in the Christian Newer Testament, is this brief transition narrative as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. He’s near the end of his career and is prepared for a showdown with the ruling elites of the age. And you should know that Luke purposefully arranges this episode immediately before the story of Jesus’ outburst in the Temple, where he turns over the money-changers’ tables, a notorious racket whereby corrupt religious authorities colluded with unscrupulous entrepreneurs to exploit poor and working-class people during their expression of religious fidelity and devotion.
Read more ›by Ken Sehested, Lynn Gottlieb, and Rabia Terri Harris
In the early weeks of 2011, during the Arab Spring uprising, Egyptian blogger Nevine Zaki posted a photograph from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It showed a group of people bowing in the traditional style of Muslim prayer, surrounded by other people standing hand-in-hand, facing outward, as a wall of protection against hostile pro-government forces. Zaki affixed this caption: “A picture I took yesterday of Christians protecting Muslims during their prayers.”
Similar scenes—some ancient, some as recent as yesterday’s newspaper—have been arranged in a host of ways with a variety of religious identities. No religious tradition can claim a monopoly on compassionate courage. And yet such snapshots remain rare.
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