Commentary

Memorial Day: A historical summary

Why being for peace is not enough

by Ken Sehested

        As a child I wasn’t aware that Memorial Day observances were intended for those felled on the battlefield. I though of it as a day of familial remembrance, honoring relatives gone before us—veterans and non-veterans alike—something akin to a low-church All Saints Day, but with flowers. Lots of flowers.

        For decades, to this day, one of my uncles in southern Oklahoma assumes the duty of trimming grass, pulling weeds and placing wreaths on the Rowell, Sehested and Young burial plots in the small town of Marlow, where I was born and where my own name is carved—with only a birth day for now—in a granite slab that stretches across my immediate family’s plot, where both my father’s body and my sister’s ashes are buried.

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Eastertide

The outing of the church

by Ken Sehested

       Some years ago, writing in the days leading up to Easter, I realized important though tragic anniversaries arrived in the days immediately following that Sunday.

        “Even before our resurrection flowers have wilted, we will be confronted again with the presence of evil. Since Easter falls early in the calendar this year, in the coming resurrection week we will be forced to remember the enduring power of death. In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, was executed by the Nazis two days after Easter Sunday. This next Thursday, April 4, we will remember the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. right here in Memphis.” —continue reading “Open Letter to My Daughter: Easter morning, with the stench of death still in the air”

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Find a trailhead to the ministry of reconciliation

What should the Christchurch massacre prompt from us?

by Ken Sehested

        What can you do to abate the harm caused by the mass murders in New Zealand mosques? Not much, in the scheme of things.

        Which is not to say there’s nothing at all to do.

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There is a new creation

The Apostle Paul’s vision of the ministry of reconciliation

by Ken Sehested

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything
has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given
us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
—2 Corinthians 5:17-19

        Few things are more uniform among Protestant churches the world over than Sunday school. Many are surprised to learn that this organized form of Bible study began in Britain in the 18th century. And its specific purpose was to provide literacy training for poor children. It was a ministry of reconciliation in an age when industrialization was deepening the chasm of poverty.

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Essay in celebration of the global Youth Strike 4 Climate movement

Choosing between Wednesday’s penitential ashes vs. the scorched aftermath of Earth’s burning

by Ken Sehested

“God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water but the fire next time.”
—lyrics from the Negro spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep”

        I haven’t been able to get Greta Thunberg’s face out of my mind, especially since Ash Wednesday.

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Good News for Yahoos – “The Year of the Lord’s favor”

The emphasis on justice in the biblical theme of “jubilee," cf. Luke 4:14-21 & Isaiah 61:1-5

by Ken Sehested

In his first sermon, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah 61, an explicit references to the
covenant terms from Mt. Sinai regarding jubilee observance and its profound
project of social, political and economic restructuring.

{Written in 1998, prior to being a founding co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC.)

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Wiseguys and One Scared King

A sermon based on Matthew 2:1-12

by Ken Sehested

Circle of Mercy Congregation
Asheville, NC
1 January 2012

      Eleven years ago—when the calendar turned from 2000 to 20001—I got inspired by the televised review of New Year’s celebrations around the world, starting in Australia, and stayed up to write a poem. Here’s a part of it—and, by the way, the reference to “Gregory” is about Pope Gregory. It was during his reign as Roman Catholic Pontiff in the 16th century that the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar.)

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The contentious legacy of George H.W. Bush as mirror of our conflicted national soul

by Ken Sehested

        “I’ve slept since then.” That’s my Mom’s go-to line when trying, unsuccessfully, to remember something. After 90 trips around the sun, she says it more frequently.

        “I’ve slept since then” also describes much of the public’s waning attention to the life and legacy of President George H.W. Bush. Given the information overload of our 24/7 news cycles and multiplicity of sources, that marker in our nation’s history is just so yesterday.

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Commentary on Colossians 3:12-17

1st Sunday after Christmas Day, Year C

by Ken Sehested

 

        Mohandas Gandhi is popularly known as one who confronted empires. Yet those who knew him, or have studied him since, acknowledge the Mahatma spoke often of a more complex struggle against tyranny. The conflict is not only with the British, he would say, but also within our own communities and “with myself.”  The Pauline vision generally, and the specific pastoral advice in this text, is rooted in just such a multidimensional understanding of reconciliation. There’s a seamlessness to the task which communities of faith are forever separating and assigning graded priority.

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The Baptizer’s Bargain

A sermon based on Luke's story of John the Baptist

by Ken Sehested,
Texts: Luke 3:7-18; Zeph. 3:14-20; Phil. 4:4-7

            The text and sermon for this week is a continuation of the story from Luke, and Joyce’s commentary last week: the story John the Baptist. Or, more properly, John the Baptizer. (John really wasn’t a Baptist—although, one summer during college I worked as a youth minister in a church whose pastor believed that Baptists can trace their history back to John. If that were true, that means there were Baptists before there were Christians!)

            Before I read the second part of the text from Luke 3, let’s review the first part.

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