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This sermon was delivered at Yale Divinity School in 2021 for the class Radical Lives of Proclamation.   The town of Santiago de Maria sits high up in the mountains of southern El Salvador,  approximately one thousand meters, or more than half a mile, above sea level. To get there, Father Oscar Romero would travel on horseback up the narrow trail that wound around the mountain’s slope. What would bring Romero to this inconvenient spot atop the mountain was, in a way, coffee. No, he was not looking for a cup of El Salvador’s finest in some tucked-away coffee shop. He would go there to visit the campesinos, the peasant farmers who labored in the coffee fields that covered the mountains. These were pastoral visits. Romero was the bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de Maria, and the coffee plantations were his parish.            Father Romero did not always feel such a close connection with the campesinos. During his first year as bishop, he never...

I wrote this reflection on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 as a way to process what I experienced that day, but also to remember. Memories fade and even change. Revisiting this reflection on the twentieth anniversary of that horrible day both challenges and changes some of my memories of that day.   I live two blocks south of what was the World Trade Center, in a section of New York known as Battery Park City. It is the most beautiful neighborhood in Manhattan, with tree-lined streets, parks, and a spectacular backdrop of the Hudson River. Although quiet and residential, it is but minutes from the hyperactivity of Wall Street and City Hall—a small suburban enclave at the southern tip of the capital of the world. My wife Sandy and I bought a small studio apartment (our first home) the previous summer and had only recently finished decorating.  We loved living in Battery Park City. There was only one thing that concerned Sandy. Every so often, when walking past the World Trade ...

This sermon was delivered at Yale Divinity School in 2020 for the class Sacred Moments in African-American Preaching. I begin with a simple observation. Of the four canonical gospels, Matthew is the only one that ends with the words of Jesus. Mark, Luke, and John all end in the narrator’s voice, but Matthew closes with the words of Jesus. Mark ends at the tomb, with the women fleeing in terror and amazement. Luke ends with the disciples in Jerusalem, praising at the temple. John ends on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, with a dialogue between Jesus and Peter. And here Matthew ends with the disciples in Galilee, meeting Jesus at the mountain where he had directed them.                Matthew gives Jesus the last word. But before we get to those last words, there are three other words in this passage that I call to our attention because I find them astonishing. Let me read verse 17 once more. “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some do...

For the past two weeks the Korean media have focused on one story to the exclusion of all others: the sinking of the Sewol ferry, in which 302 people--the majority of them high school students on a school trip--perished needlessly. The story of the tragedy kept even Obama's visit to Korea from the lead headline. The tragedy has caused Korea, a nation already profoundly concerned with how it is perceived internationally, to become deeply self critical. From the cowardice and criminality of the captain and crew, who told the passengers to stay put while they abandoned ship, to the tragically slow and inadequate initial response of rescuers, to the chaotic and combative rescue effort in the subsequent days involving multiple government agencies, to the inappropriate and opportunistic remarks and actions of political figures and their children, to the pervasive corruption of government regulatory agencies that allowed a substandard, overweight ferry to pass inspection, to the at times ...

So the church where I work is located on the campus of a girls' middle and high school. What is our parking lot on Sunday morning doubles as their field for physical education. Since the weather has been a little warmer of late, the school's PE class has moved outdoors. Looking out the window of my office the other day I saw the students lined up in military formation. I wondered if it was some sort of drill. It turns out they were doing calisthenics, which I assume constituted their PE class. It's a far cry from what students in America experience, or at least what I did. Where's the dodgeball? Regimentation and order pervade Korean society. Meetings begin at a set time regardless of whether everyone is there. People fall into their place in society based on their age, gender, family background, level of education, and perhaps most importantly--place of education. The annual college placement exam is the most important event in a high school student's life to th...

Every Tuesday the pastors here go out for lunch together. Yesterday we visited a restaurant owned by a church member. The restaurant's specialty is a dish known as boshintang (보신탕), which is...well...dog stew. I thought that eating dog "meat" was confined to the more rural areas of Korea, but this restaurant was in the middle of Gangnam, one of the busiest districts of Seoul. Bottom line--no, I did not partake--the restaurant offered other dishes. Only a particular type of dog is raised for its "meat," or so I've read. In Korean they are called nureongi (누렁이), which is slang for "yellow one." They are mid-sized spitz-type dogs that look a lot like the Jindo, a dog native to Korea that Koreans revere for its intelligence and loyalty. Dog ownership is becoming quite common in Seoul, especially among younger Koreans, so I hope that Koreans find it increasingly difficult to distinguish dogs that sit on a couch from those that sit on a plate. ...