Urban Gathering Center

Who was Crucified for Speaking Truth to Power - GOD IS NOT If you have been reading my blog it will come as no surprise that I no longer believe that Jesus came to die for our sins, so that we can go to heaven when we die. It is not that I don’t believe in eternal life with God or that we are not imperfect people who need forgiveness. What I object to is the characterization of God that is implied therein. The baggage that often comes with it is that God is and angry judge wh

One of the great arguments at progressive seminaries is weather it matters that Jesus was brought back to life in bodily form after his crucifixion. This is a question that has only been asked with more than one answer for the last 100 years or so. Before that people believed in a more literal reading of the Bible and took it for granted that the Bible was talking about a literal bodily resurrection. We can’t know the answer for certain. I do know that it is something tha

Who was Crucified THE CROSS The man they called Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross around the year 33. The Roman cross was reserved for those people who publicly tried to subvert the Roman Empire. These criminals of the state were called insurrectionists. Thousands of people were crucified by the Roman Empire around the time of Jesus. This tool of death was meant to be a public humiliation as a deterrent against anyone else thinking that they wanted to try t

I grew up in Northern Minnesota where my dad was the pastor of two small churches. The names of the towns were Embarrass and Forbes. I don’t remember much about them except that they were small, rural, farming and iron mining communities. I do remember two things. The first is that all the people loved me. The women of he congregation loved to bake me cookies and the men taught me useful expressions in Finnish. The second thing I remember was a picture that hung in the

TO SEE AGAIN There is a story in the Gospel of John where Jesus meets a man who was blind since birth. The oddity of someone being born blind causes Jesus’ disciples to ask a theological question. They wanted to know who’s fault it was that this man was born blind. “Was it his sin or his parents?” One of the ideas people had about life, is that if bad stuff happens to you, somebody must have screwed up. Jesus confronts this wrong thinking head on. He goes over to the man

BIG CITY LIFE The first time I lived near a big city was when I was 21, it was Portland Oregon. I remember driving through the city and seeing men wearing dirty clothes, pushing shopping carts full of belongings. Some of them muttered foul things under their breath. Some were not so polite or quiet with their mutterings. Growing up in a town of 800 people in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula did not give me much experience with this. The weather in Portland was much more suite

WEE LITTLE MAN Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. This is one of the lines to a Sunday School song I learned when I was a wee little boy. Actually, the Zacchaeus of the Gospels was not only short, but a tax collector. As such, he was in charge of discerning how much taxes it looked like you could afford to pay. He had guidelines for sure but he also had some wiggle room and what ever he could wiggle out of you that was extra, he got to keep. As y

To Bring Peace to All People PEACE WITH GOD We confess that Jesus lived to raise up the lowly (yesterdays’s blog) and to bring peace to all people. When I first wrote this a few years ago, what I meant was that Jesus came to teach us that we need not live in fear of an Angry God. I was hanging out with a neighbor who had been to prison multiple times, and was really struggling with forgiving himself and making peace with God. When I asked him about what the God he was env

Who lived to raise up the lowly. In the time of Jesus there were those who had, and had a lot, and then those who had not. For the Jews there were those aristocracy who lived in Jerusalem and were part of three different political groups. Excavations of their homes in and around Jerusalem have found extreme wealth and a lifestyle of worldly extravagance. The most elite class were those who had connections to the Temple and its wealth generating sacrificial system. Peasants

The Heart and Character of God - HAMSTER WHEEL One of the most significant theological insights I have had happened in Hebrew Bible class in Seminary. We we're talking about Moses and the burning bush. My professor was teaching us about the Hebrew words that are translated into English as, “I am.” As in, God telling Moses, “I am who I am.” and “tell Pharaoh, ‘I AM’ sent me.” God was telling Moses what God’s name is. What I learned is that the same Hebrew word could mean