Mark 8:31-38 Dear Partner in Preaching, Some will see in this Sunday’s passage a call to be patient and long-suffering in the just cause, and in this sense to take up one’s cross, and I’m sympathetic to that counsel. Others will hear the promise that all things, even something as awful as the cross, work together, in the words of the Apostle, “for the good of the one who believes” (Rom. 8:28) and so invite us to take up our cross trusting that God is in control, and I’ve seen that counsel provide comfort during difficult times. Still others will ask what things we’ve used to try to save our lives rather than giving ourselves...

Fourth Friday Film Forum: Silver Linings Playbook To be a person, my friend Andy Root says in his wonderful new book The Relational Pastor, is to be broken. Most of us probably don’t like the sound of that too much, but there is surprising power and freedom in admitting it’s true. For once we stop trying constantly to pretend that we have it all together, that life is just as we want it to be, and that we don’t really need anyone else, then we can open ourselves up to the power of authentic and transformative relationship. While I’ll review Andy’s book more thoroughly soon, I thought of it as I prepared to write about what was one...

Given this Sunday’s Gospel reading from John 2, where Jesus makes manifest that God will no longer be contained in the Temple but is now, in Jesus, on the loose, I thought Christian Wiman’s poem Every Riven Thing was appropriate. But this isn’t simply a tribute to the God present in nature; it is testimony to the God who appears in brokeness. As Wiman says in an interview with Radio Open Source: Riven means broken, it means shattered or wounded or unhealed, and I think that notion is very important to me and my notion of God and of religion: that we are broken creatures, very broken creatures. And I don’t think of God as...