Part of why we need to be careful about Halloween is because there are so many stories around us that associate evil with women’s bodies, with other cultures, with those who are different. Specific evils: Racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, age-ism, these evils haunt us. Real concrete harm is done when we allow these forces to run amok. Some modern feminists have re-claimed Lilith. Some in our congregation may even have once attended a “Lilith Fair” concert, a tour which featured women artists and told the rabbinic story of Lilith as Adam’s first wife, who refused to be subservient to men. When we encounter resistance to Halloween, I think we have to ask ourselves: what has done more damage in our history, literal demons?
Category Archives: Audio Sermon
God’s Sense of Humor and our Sense of Self
There is humor in these texts, I would argue, because God invites us almost always to take ourselves more lightly. The Spiritual life should make us laugh at ourselves at times, or else we’re probably doing it wrong.
God, Ecology, and Relational Power
For Jesus the way the disciples (and the way we) have been taught relationship is problematic. The way we have been taught to compete and to count insiders and outsiders, it won’t work if you want to follow Jesus. It won’t work if you want to do something about climate change.
The Wisdom of the Cross and Climate Change
The wisdom of the cross asks us to see the painful truths, to see the suffering of climate change, not to avert our gaze, and the wisdom of the cross asks us to also see the beauty that can happen even in the ugliest of situations. The wisdom of the cross is that dread does not have the last word. There is always a reason to hope. There is always a reason to call our fellow human beings to stop living out of fear, to stop living in denial, to work with hope for new life.
Mike Angell 