For millions of people across the globe, God (as we have historically known God) is no longer a working number. Neither is traditional theology or the institutional church. In response, many of these spiritual skeptics have given up on religion altogether. However, plenty of them are still searching for a faith that can work in the modern world.

It was the rich and powerful who had Jesus killed. His brand of socialism was not good for business or politics. To their chagrin, his death did not end the movement he had begun. In fact, it spread.

For Paul, baptism is the pre-condition for equality.  Simply put, when we are baptized into Christ, there is no inequality.  This is true for all relationships, both inside and outside the assembly.  For Paul, this was a non-negotiable affirmation that he expected his churches to adhere to.

This morning, I preached at Platte Woods United Methodist Church in Kansas City. They’ve been doing a sermon and education series on Freeing Jesus – and they asked me to come and finish up their study of the book.

What is your opinion of St Paul?

Read some of the tributes that have been written on the occasion of the death of Bishop John Shelby Spong. 

In a recent article in progressivechristianity.org Jim Burklo wrote about the possibility, if not likelihood, that there will be a flood of disaffected folks leaving the evangelical churches and that progressive congregations should be ready “to attract them by making changes in our styles of worship and congregational life that are necessary to seize this remarkable moment.” 

We cannot be separate from God or from each other. Yet, we can spend much of our lives imagining that this is the case.

July 11, 2021 Sermon by Rev. Mark Sandlin
Presbyterian Church of the Covenant
Greensboro, NC
 

I believe that God’s love undergirds creation and is at work always in our world, sometimes despite the seeming evidence to the contrary. And I believe that God’s love is for everyone – it is indeed the bread of life, no matter what symbols or metaphors we use.

In The Land Is Not Empty, author Sarah Augustine unpacks the harm of the Doctrine of Discovery–a set of laws rooted in the fifteenth century that gave Christian governments the moral and legal right to seize lands they “discovered” despite those lands already being populated by indigenous peoples.

Both Jesus and Paul were mystics, as, indeed, were most of the prophets.  The insights and experiences of Christian mystics are important to any evolving understanding of Christian faith.  Mysticism (mystical experience) reveals the significance of imagination, feelings, and intuition in the human spirit as human beings continue to explore the wonder and mystery of relationship to the Spirit.

We are in a time of transition, the midst of a cultural shift—what some have called “The Great Turning.”

  House for All Sinners & Saints was only about a year old when I took a Sunday morning phone call from a young parishioner who had gone home to Grand Rapids for a weekend visit. I …

Join preeminent New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan on location in Turkey as they trace the Apostle Paul’s footsteps throughout the Roman Empire.

n his inspirational novel, A Man Called Jesus, author, Dr. Rick Herrick, presents a Jesus with irresistible compassion who is deeply infused with God’s love.

Have you ever wondered about Nazareth as a place to live in the first century? How about Jesus the miracle worker: how did he do the great deeds reported of him in the New Testament? “A Man Called Jesus” answers those questions and more.

Given the amount of criticism of Paul over the centuries, if we can try to understand Paul in light of his authentic letters (the seven letters he, in fact, actually wrote), we soon discover that the radical Paul (the Paul of his authentic letters: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) had a lot in common with the radical Jesus (the Jesus of history). Stated more accurately, the Jesus we learn of in the gospel stories had a lot in common with Paul.