ACROSS THE LINES - Archive (2006-2020)

Preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, June 17, 2007 Luke 7:36-49 36 Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37 When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38 and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is--that she is a sinner." 40 Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said. 41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him bac...

Published in The Christian Century , March 6, 2007 WHEN I TELL OTHER PASTORS that I hate weddings and love funerals, they smile knowingly. Of course, the dark humor rings true with them--every pastor I know can tell a "wedding from hell" story, and all pastors can think of a few funerals at which they'd love to preside. In my colleagues' smiles I also see an understanding, born from firsthand experience, that funerals--and the events that precede and follow them--present some of the most meaningful opportunities for pastors to witness to the grace and love of God. My passion for funerals has led me to research the historic Christian practices of marking the arrival of death. Since so many generations of Christians lived before dying people were confined to hospitals, they spent their entire lives surrounded by death and dying. As pastors we can draw on their wisdom in ministering to modern people, who struggle so mightily when confronted with the reality of death....

An early version of this article was named a finalist in the 2006 Editor's Prize competition of the Missouri Review . One year ago today Oprah Winfrey summoned James Frey to appear live on her Oprah television show to discuss revelations that he had lied about his personal history in writing his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. At first Winfrey had tried to dismiss the accusations against Frey– first made on January 8, 2006 in the on-line journal The Smoking Gun – even calling in to CNN’s Larry King Live show on January 11 to declare her faith in the “underlying message” of the book she had turned into a best-seller by making it the September, 2005 selection of her celebrated book club. Now, two weeks later, she was withdrawing her blessing. If Frey thought this process would be painless, Winfrey disabused him of this notion quickly, renouncing her earlier defense of him in a devastating monologue and then turning on him as he sat stiff on her studio sofa. Conflating her own fe...

The humorist Art Buchwald died on Thursday, having spent the last year of his life wisecracking about his impending death – often live on television. “I hope I see you next week,” he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week on March 12, 2006. “We’ll say, ‘Something’s wrong with the camera – he’s still going!’” But Art Buchwald cracked more than jokes as he died – he also put a few more cracks in a crumbling cultural consensus about how we should prepare for death. The death-watch began last January when Buchwald made the unorthodox decision to forego the kidney dialysis that his doctors told him could prolong his life. “It was a tough decision,” he told Diane Rehm of National Public Radio that same month. “But I don’t want pain. I don’t want to be kept alive for the sake of living. I don’t want Alzheimer’s. I don’t want cancer.” And he added: “I’m very happy with my choices.” Even more striking was the emotional posture that Mr. Buchwald assumed after making his decision. As...

To many the work of a pastor may appear easy – even some church-going people seem to think that preaching on Sunday is all the job requires. In fact pastors must exercise many skills, from fundraising to counseling, from public relations to office administration. Pastors, I have heard it said, are the last generalists in a largely specialized professional world. What makes professional church work most difficult, though, are the people. At a gathering of pastors I once heard a colleague wisecrack, “You put that many people together in one place and they’re bound to stink after a while.” The rest of us laughed and shot each other knowing glances. Good pastors know that sometimes they stink up the joint, too. Last Thursday a Denver man, Mike Jones, announced on a Colorado talk-radio program that Ted Haggard, the lead pastor of New Life Church, a 14,000-member church in Colorado Springs, paid him for sex and used methamphetamines across the course of a three-year relationship. Jon...

Five years after the only September 11 that will ever seem to matter, the world is awakening to the potential consequences of the Bush Administration’s apocalyptic reaction to the events of that most horrible day. Public opinion in Europe and the United States is growing toward consensus: President Bush’s all-or-nothing “war on terror” is itself a grave threat to global stability in the 21st century. The 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were so horrifying the early tone of absolutism adopted by the Bush Administration seemed natural enough. Nobody blanched when on September 14, 2001 President Bush intoned, “every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” In his greatest fit of hyperbole, President Bush declared that the aim of America’s war on terror was to “to rid the world of evildoers”? This desire is understandable, even admirable, as a visceral reaction to the events of September 11. Who would...

Published in The Christian Century , August 8, 2006 Last summer I was invited by a hospice chaplain to accompany him on a visit to the family of Maria Durand de Perez, a Mexican woman who had died a few weeks earlier in the border town of San Ysidro, California, at the astonishing age of 111. Knowing that I had once worked as the pastor of a Spanish-language church, the chaplain, whose name is Andy, thought that my presence might prove helpful to Angela, Maria's 78-year-old daughter, who was mourning the loss of her mother deeply. In his previous visits, Andy, who spoke only English, and Angela, who spoke only Spanish, had depended for translation on Yrma, Angela's bilingual daughter and the owner of the San Ysidro home. Andy suspected (rightly, it turned out) that Angela was longing to have a more in-depth conversation about her mother's remarkable life. At first it seemed absurd that Angela's grief was so pronounced. It was not as if she had had insufficient time to p...