A Sermon for Labor Day My favorite teacher – one of my favorite human beings – was the late Joseph Sittler, Lutheran pastor, first class scholar and, for years Professor of Theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In the world of religious scholarship in the last decades of the 20th Century, Sittler […]

https://jmbpastor.wordpress.com/2021/09/05/1027/

A Grateful Man

I knew it was coming some day but never imagined that it might actually happen. As of January 1, 2016, I am fully retired. For the first time since September 1960, I am no longer employed as a minister and no longer responsible for the life of an institution. I worked as a Presbyterian minister […]

Downsizing a Library

When I had the privilege of presiding at the wedding of a seminary president and a professor of Homiletics, both dear friends, I told them, in the homily, that I wasn’t nearly as concerned about the long-time viability of their relationship as I was about how in the world they would manage the challenge of […]

Preach About God

When I have occasion to visit a seminary or divinity school and talk with students I am impressed that they seem to know why they are there and what they believe. My recollection is that I enrolled in order to figure out what I believed and whether or not I believed at all. I showed […]