City Called Heaven

One of the most personal moments in the Passion story is when “At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’?“ Mark ( 15:34 ) and Matthew ( 27:46 ), believed to be the earlier written gospels, both cite these as Jesus' only words from the cross. Interpreters of the story have long wondered how to understand this verse. To whom is Jesus speaking? Does this one sentence convey Jesus’ sense of abandonment by God? Or are we to understand this opening verse of Psalm 22 as a means of quoting the entire psalm? Either way, I think, is a good way of hearing Jesus. By most all evidence, God is not coming to the rescue. The end is near, and the end is certain. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God seems to have been killed by the powers of domination. There will be no conquest for this soon-to-be lifeless Messiah. I can identify with those moments of desolation, where there is no help, no

My prayers at 9/11 On the morning of September 11, 2001, somewhere between sleeping and wakening, I think I heard a low flying jet above me at 121st Street and Broadway. When I awoke and left my dorm room, Trevor said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I went ahead to my first class of the new semester, on Aggression.*&nbsp I was there when the north tower fell, and the word came that classes were cancelled. Over the next few years, I was exposed to a lot of prayer. I remember the noon chapel service that day, and words of scripture,. And I especially remember John McGuckin in his cassock, standing off to the side in a corner of the chapel with prayerbook in hand, offering a silent witness of prayer while others spoke and sang. When there was no need for blood at St. Luke’s Roosevelt, I went downtown to NYU Chapel, where I had just finished my internship, and arrived just as the priest was leaving after a very hard day. Hassan, our Muslim security guard, graci

Nineteen years is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. But a lot has changed in the world. One thing that persists is grief. There are too many more losses. The mourning for 9/11 is not concluded, and more tragedy has come to the world. It is important to remember what has happened. If we do not notice the devastations around us, what will we pay attention to? And if we notice only one tragedy, we are frozen in time, blind, deaf, and numb to the world we live in. Because of the confluence of circumstances, 9/11 is probably the most memorialized single event in history. If you were more than two or three years old and living in the U.S., 9/11 was part of your life. And it was a moment in time where we had the world's sympathy and help. This past Labor Day, Lisa and I visited the Harborview 9/11 Memorial Park in Bayonne. It holds the Tear of Grief memorial, a gift from the Russian people (officially named "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism").

When you're a boy in growing up in St. Louis, you learn about baseball. My Dad took me to my first baseball game in 1963, at the old Sportman's Park, to see the great Stan Musial play in his last season. I was a little young to understand what was going on, except that it was a Big Deal. Baseball was Important. I missed the 1964 World Series, but by 1966 or '67 I was playing ball myself and was, of course, a Cardinal fan. And what a time that was. In '67 they would win the World Series, and in '68 lose in a dramatic Game 7. It was a solid team, with some of the best players of the day and some for the ages. The '67 team was managed and general managed by future Hall of Famers (Red Schoendiest and Musial). Dal Maxvill, Julian Javier, Mike Shannon, Orlando Cepeda in the infield. Tim McCarver behind the plate. Two Hall of Famers in the starting rotation, Steve Carlton and the great Bob Gibson. Roger Maris and Curt Flood in right and center field. And the thrillin

A Dictionary of the Bible includes a definition of the "desolating sacrilege" (NRSV; ‘abomination of desolation’, AV and REB in Mark 13: 14; ‘appalling abomination’, NJB). "The phrase is used in Dan. 9: 27 to denote the pagan altar set up in the Jerusalem Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BCE; and in Mark 13: 14 it may refer to the failed attempt by the emperor Caligula to install his statue in the Temple (40 CE) or to an event such as the display of army emblems in the Temple in the war of 66–70 CE. Luke (21: 20) probably has the siege of the city in mind..." ( A Dictionary of the Bible, Oxford Biblical Studies ). How strongly can you say it? How can you communicate the outrage when the life is crushed out of a man on a Minneapolis street, or the perverse claims righteousness is their property, as they bring devastation to a holy place? Imperial power demands that all bow before it. Yet it is illegitimate. The emperor has never had any clothes. The Livin

You may have been blessed to have Someone, perhaps many Someones, in your life who cared for you, who mentored you, who helped awaken you to the best there is in you. Who opened to you the book of yourself and the book of life. Perhaps they are still with you. Perhaps they have passed in one way or another, and you feel their loss. Luke 24:13-35 - The Walk to (and From) Emmaus .