Deep Water
Jack Hardaway ] Call stories. This is one of the great Sundays of the year. We hear the call stories of Isaiah, and Paul, and Simon Peter, and James, and John. The psalm is a call story as well, turned back around, the psalmist calls for God. Isaiah lost in grief for his King, Paul […]
God Words
Jack Hardaway ] Bad theology hurts people. It is spiritually, emotionally and physically traumatizing. And trauma is crippling if it goes on for too long. Each of us has a limit to how much trauma we can endure until we start to fall apart. Bad theology is crippling and deadly. A good bit of my […]
Lasting Impression
Jack Hardaway ] I went to Mitchell Road Elementary school in Greenville SC. I used to ride my bicycle there and back every day. One day there was some construction and they repaved a section of the sidewalk. Unfortunately, they didn’t mark off the sidewalk afterward. So that afternoon when all the students were released […]
Reverence for Life
Jack Hardaway ] We grow up slowly. Human life, the human soul, we are a slowly maturing fruit. We are always coming of age. My 16th, 17th, and 18th birthdays were these long slow coming of age events. I was given a Remington 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun for my 16th birthday. The power, the responsibility, the […]
Homecoming
Jack Hardaway ] Sometimes, if you are lucky, once in your life, you find a certain dog, usually the dog finds you, and there is a bond that is rarely repeated. I’ve had many pets over the years, but only one dog like that. She found me when I was in college. A little black […]
The Victory of God
Jack Hardaway ] There are days. And then there are days. Days of Ascension, transcendence, rising, floating, going up with a shout of victory. Like the mass ascension at a hot air balloon festival, the colorful canvass filling the sky, rising, carried by the wind, like God’s sail lifting and pulling. Our eyes are turned […]
Outward and Visible
Jack Hardaway ] What is it with Jesus and food? If it involves food then it must be Jesus. No one believes it is really him unless they see him eat. Bread and fish. Jesus has this thing with food. And those closest to him could not recognize him or believe in him with out […]
The True Meaning?
Jack Hardaway ] I am a big fan of all the Christmas stuff that surrounds us. All the customs, all the tacky things, the cheap sentimental tripe and treacle, the cheesy and the shallow, the crowded masses of humanity shopping endlessly, the crass commercialism. Yep. I love all that stuff. I am constantly amazed at […]
Jesus and Food
So what is it with Jesus and food? Several of the Sundays of the Easter Season have unofficial titles, like Doubting Thomas Sunday for the second Sunday last week, and Good Shepherd Sunday for the fourth Sunday, next week. Today, the third Sunday, we always have a reading involving Jesus being encountered at an event […]
Waiting
I was once a student in Africa, in Kenya. One day I traveled across the country for a research project on the border of Uganda. I traveled by bus. It was a new experience for me, because the buses there are literally packed with multiple layers of people upon people. We drove across the rift […]
What Endures
I have a friend whose town where he grew up no longer exists. The bridge is down, the road is overgrown. If you drive to the end of the road, and push your way through the brambles and the brush, working your way into the forgotten woods, the old buildings can still be found, abandoned, […]
Saints Unawares
We run across saints in the least expected people and places. The Gospel according to Luke makes this point over and over again. By this point, 19 chapters into the story, we have come to expect the unexpected, to not be surprised by the surprising, to not be disturbed by the disturbing. But Luke has […]
Contempt and Mercy
“God, I thank you that I am not like other people…especially that guy over there…” “What was that God? What did you say? Now just hold on for just one second! What’s the point of religion if I can’t look down on someone else? What good is that? Why be virtuous if I can’t be […]
God is Chronic
God is a chronic condition. Like rain on Noah’s ark. Like Jonah trying to out swim that whale. Like Jacob wrestling that angel. Like forty years in the wilderness. Like gum on the shoe. Like smoke on a pig. Like a tenacious widow pestering a corrupt judge. God is a chronic condition. The parable of […]
Praise
School buses. So much of my childhood revolved around old school buses, back and forth, up and down East North St., over in Greenville, year after year. Back then high school students drove the buses, and that was always interesting, they would race each other up and down East North St. gunning the engines. The […]
All the Good News
The horse drawn carriage comes to the end of the road, at a river, a swollen river where there should be a bridge. There is no way across. They stand there looking at the water, they have no idea what to do. The grandmother, steps out of the wagon walks to the water’s edge, has […]
Trading Places
When I was in middle school, I read this great story called The Dog Days of Arthur Cane. Arthur was a teenager who treated everyone poorly, like the proverbial dog, until someone cast a spell and turned him into a dog. He had some adventures and when he had learned his lesson he became human […]
Trickster
My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a Manhattan businessman who dressed and played the part with style. The hay day of his business was in the 1970’s and 80’s, advising companies on how to claim as many tax credits as possible. I remember him talking about how so much of his business revolved around […]
Searching
It has been eighteen years, more than a generation, since September 11th 2001. We are reminded to never forget. That has been the refrain and the litany of this past week. Never forget. To always remember. How do we do that? In the shadow of such dark history it is a good time to be […]
Table Talk
You know that question that we sometimes use for a conversation starter, “Who are the three people in all of history that you would like to have over for dinner?” Inevitably Jesus shows up on the invitation list. The biblical witness is that pretty much everyone who had Jesus over for dinner regretted it. Jesus […]
Set Free
Sunday. Sabbath time. Growing up, the day just sort of lasted forever, it just went on and on. Church, Sunday dinner, visiting, maybe some time to play. There wasn’t all that much to do or anywhere to go. Church, food, visiting, sitting around. I understand the gift of it now, but then it just felt […]
Telling Time
I remember learning to tell time. It was before digital clocks and watches. It was all about learning to read the hands on a clock or a watch.It was a mystery that eluded me. When I was in first grade my father gave me one of his old wrist watches, from high school. It was […]
The Neighborly God
Our lives are parables that reveal God. Every day, every breath is the story of God showing up. Like parables, life has these moments when we feel the surprise, the contradiction, the whiplash change of perspective when at the end of the story we change, from death to life. God is like that unexpected twist […]
Hand to the Plow
Rototillers. Especially the old stand byes with the Briggs and Stratton engines. I have a long and difficult history with these. I have spent years trying to start them, pulling that rope over and over, adjusting this and that. Years of being dragged behind, bounced and kicked like a mule. I have tumbled down hillsides […]