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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Lisa Yee |Kelly Yang |Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu
Living in Southeast Texas as a teenager, I belonged to one of the few Asian families in our small town. My parents owned a Chinese buffet, where I worked every Saturday and many evenings. Pentecostal groups, their women’s uncut hair in sweeping updos, settled on the place in droves after their evening services, just as we were about to close. A man wearing a “Jesus Is My Homeboy” baseball cap always came on weekends and ate unthinkable quantities of salt-and-pepper crab.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
As a girl, I’d pronounce compote like coyote. Clafoutis rhymed with clematis or stephanotis instead of cherry or juneberry, syllables I never quite pronounced right— add to this list, a plaque and the plague; musically, a zydeco versus a xylophone.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” Stephen Dedalus says, early in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Twenty-five years ago, when I was starting my dissertation research on this groundbreaking novel from 1922, I spent some time analyzing the significance of this statement in the context of Irish history and Joyce’s artistic theory. Now, I don’t have to analyze it. I just get it. I am watching an epoch of history unfold, and I don’t like where it seems to be going.
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
The Buechner Narrative Writing Project honors the life and legacy of writer and theologian Frederick Buechner with the aim of nurturing the art of spiritual writing and reflection. Readers are invited to submit first-person narratives (under 1,000 words). Read more. Moments continue to go up in flames like the bush in Midian to illumine, if only for a moment, a path that stretches before us like no other path.
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Patrícia Ventura |Edward Chan |Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu
It is rarely contested that a reciprocal relationship exists between White power and American neoliberal culture. As the public conversation around racial capitalism and the threat of White Christian nationalism to democracy increases, so does the awareness that neither neoliberalism nor White power could exist in its current form without the other.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |William H. Willimon |Jon Mathieu |Heidi Neumark
I’ve walked in and out church doors for so long I had forgotten. The strangeness of a building, a gathering, an hour or two or three on a Sunday morning where you, me, anyone can simply walk in and sit and listen, maybe meet someone new. No ticket required. No purchase of a pint or coffee or burger and fries in order to stay. You don’t need a bike. You don’t need to know how to sew or sing to be a part of this living thing that comes into being every week. You could go to a park or free museum, sure.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |William H. Willimon |Jon Mathieu |Heidi Neumark
The people must have been so disappointed in Samuel. He comes into his leadership role as a prophet and judge instead of the sons of Eli, who are corrupt. For all the years of his life, Samuel is a trusted leader of Israel. He goes on a circuit from town to town as a judge. He leads the people militarily, making sacrifices to God and gaining God’s support in battle (1 Sam. 7:6–16). Samuel is a good leader. Until he isn’t.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
Acolytes lead the procession at San Mateo Episcopal Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, on May 19. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain) Six years ago, during the keynote address at the 2018 Nuevo Amanecer conference in Hendersonville, North Carolina, Episocpal Bishop Daniel G.P. Gutiérrez of the Diocese of Pennsylvania told an audience of Latino Episcopalians: “We are not an outreach project. We are the church.”Today, Gutiérrez is one of five nominees to succeed Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.
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May 31, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark |Jon Mathieu |Nanette Sawyer
Ametronome ticks as a Cher record spins to life on a turntable. The camera pulls back to reveal these objects arranged neatly on a hydraulic press—along with a trumpet, a piano, a guitar, analog cameras, cans of paint, leather-bound journals, old computer monitors, and even a stack of foam emojis. As the press plate lowers, the trumpet is crushed, the paint cans burst, and the camera lenses shatter.
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May 31, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark |Jon Mathieu
To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up. For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century. Sabbath is given and commanded as a day of rest, being modeled after the idea that God rested after all the work that God had done to create the world (Ex. 20:8-11). In Deuteronomy, sabbath is also described as a sign of liberation.
