2008 May | Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Website Housecleaning and Updated Blogroll

May 092008

I am finally catching up my blogroll and updated pages on my website. Both the Sermon and Writing Clips pages have been updated with the writing I have done in the last five months.

Here are some wonderful sites that I have come across that I would like everyone to know about. First is Jan Richardson’s site, The Painted Prayerbook. Jan is an artist and a theologian. She chooses one ov the lectionary passages for the week, illustrates it with her art, and always has a thought provoking meditation to go with it.

Feminist Theology in an Age of Fear and Hope is a site written by several women who priests in The Episcopal Church and the Independent Catholic Church. The look at one of the passages of the lectionary from a feminist and gender equal perspective.

Conversations at the Edge with Helen Mildenhall is wonderful community of different faith, agnostics, and atheists talking about the role of spirituality in our lives.

Pam Hogeweide’s How God Messed Up My Religion are Pam’s thoughts and writings on how religion and church aren’t always what they seem to be and may be isn’t what God had in mind. Her subtitle is “Essays of discovery and disillusionment from the junk drawer of Faith.” I love it.

Pastor Scott of Pastor Scott’s Thought is the pastor of Pasadena First Church of the Nazarene. He is also one of my former college profs. His thoughts are always worth reading.

Square One is Victoria Marenelli’s site. Victoria reports on several different things in reading, music, and culture through her feminist eyes.

So what are you reading? What sites have caught your eye lately?

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

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May 3: The Bent and Burdened Woman

Bible, Community, Sermons, Theology 5 Responses »

May 022008

The Bent and Burdened Women
Luke 13:10-17

Luke is one of my favorite books and my favorite Gospel. So it was a given for me that this is what I was going to preach on. Luke is full of stories of underdogs. Luke tells the stories of the poor, sick, and women. I come from a poor, working class, blue collar family, and Luke is our Gospel. Probably one of the reasons I like it so much as well as Luke has a lot of stories about women. Luke focuses on the marginalized and poor, which includes widows, lepers, tax collectors and others society has outcast. The outcasts take center stage in Luke. Sinners and misfitsâ€”that’s who Luke’s Gospel is about and for. At this point in Luke Jesus has already encountered several outcasts: for starters the disciples are a motley crew consisting of fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots. Then there are the lepers, more tax collectors, paralytics, and sinful women. In Luke we have the stories where Samaritan is a good guy, and a rebellious son who is forgiven and restored. The religious leaders accused of Jesus being a friend to the worst kinds of sinners. And they were right. He was and still is.

Today we meet another one of those misfits: a woman whose back is so bent that she’s literally bent over. All she sees is the ground. She can’t straighten up and she can’t look up. She talks to people’s feet, and they answer her stooped and bent back. But today her life is going to change. And today Jesus is going to get into another controversy with a Jewish leader. Because this day is the Sabbath, and Jesus is going to choose to â€œworkâ€ today. Back in chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus had run-ins with the religious authorities over what could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath.