About

Too many voices, too little substance—–that’s the bottom line with preaching in the 21st century. The walking wounded (often shot out of the saddle by preachers) catch me on Facebook or pop emails my way via Google or Tumblr. It isn’t right to “shoot the wounded.” And for my part I think the wounded are shot because fundamentalism has run wild and it ought to be challenged. (Hence this blog.)

Fundamentalism spreads like kudzu over a North Georgia barn. At times its message upstages the message of grace as its “pervasive proclaimers” reinterpret Jesus through a narrow view of Scripture, and perhaps most of all, St. Paul’s works—perhaps most specifically the Epistle to the Romans. And this should really bug us. It should “make us stomping mad!” We ought to ponder this question, “Since when do the musings of a first century man (human) trump timeless God—Jesus the Christ?” After all it was Jesus who knocked him off his ass and on to his arse on the Damascus Road—not the reverse. I think we have to admit that St. Paul would likely lose to Jesus were either to declare a thumb war.

We have to wonder about this business of using Scripture to frame God as a narrow, repressive, creep….and for my part, it seems like people who take that tact are projecting their unresolved gunk on to God. After all–it is our pattern to push the focus on anyone other than us in our efforts to avoid or evade our “gobblety-goop.” We sling poo at others so as to make sure that neither focus nor poo are centered on us. It’s a safe bet that the poo-slinging, focus-shifting business isn’t God’s pattern. I don’t buy for one minute that we have a co-dependent God moaning, pouting, and crying because frail humans fail to live into a holiness only suited to Christ Jesus.

I think we have a nurturing God that is more about the loving-it-to-wholeness business and less about the damning-it-all-to hell business. To this end—each week this blog will offer thoughtful commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) texts, not because the author is either so brilliant or so enlightened, but rather this author claims as his own,  the words of Edie Brickell who sings, “I’m not aware of too many things—I know what I know if you know what I mean.”

There it is—take it or leave it….”I know what I know if you know what I mean.”