Power to the people (right on)!

Some random musings from the cold front:

I just read that the power is not expected to be back on in Englewood until Tuesday at the earliest. My Princeton apartment is not expected to have power for another seven to ten days, but classes resume on Monday. It looks like I'll be spending more time in the library than usual.

The outside temperature in Englewood today was 55 degrees. The temperature inside my house was 60 degrees. Suddenly, I'm grateful for the fact that, when I was growing up, my father would turn the thermostat down to 60 every night (and never let it rise above 68 during the day).

I also once lived in a dump in Hell's Kitchen that would not infrequently lack heat and hot water, and occasionally even a functioning toilet, on the coldest winter days. But that was more than made up for by the apartment's panoramic vistas of the Port Authority and Lincoln Tunnel.

Given the choice, I would never opt for a cold shower over a hot one, but I'm convinced that I'm getting some sort of endorphin rush from the cold showers that I've been taking.

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SERMON: The Great Omission (Mt. 28:16-20)

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...

Where have I been?

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Unappetizer

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. ...

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