October 2019 – Spiritual Life @ Bucknell

My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Posted on October 29, 2019 by kdn004

PSALM 22, Sunday 10/27/19

Have you ever been to an HR training?
Or a leadership development session?
They tell you.
if you are seeking to give someone “Constructive Feedback”
which is HR speak for critique,
they say you’re supposed to make a “compliment sandwich.”
Like, “Eric, three things:
1. great work on the year-end report last week.
2. Your verbal abuse of your deskmates is proving a distraction.
3. I’m loving the office birthday parties you plan.

There are many ways to interpret Psalm 22.
Which seemingly takes a dramatic turn
around verse 25:
Individual and then communal
past and then present.
present and then future.

But I like to think of it as a compliment sandwich for God:
God:

Still?

Posted on October 29, 2019 by kdn004

Psalm 46

I have long wanted to take up today’s question,
which comes in many forms,
but I believe I heard posed first thusly by our very own,
Professor Peter Jansson.
“when were you last still?”

Stillness feels to me an urgent concern,
in a world in which we’re constantly connected,
constantly comparing ourselves to another.
in a community in which there’s literally always something we ought to be doing:
an assignment, an email, a paper, a proposal.
in a world that values us for our output and production,
in the midst of a newscycle,
in which there’s always somethings that commands our attention,
our anger, our grief, and action.
Stillness is a bold and countercultural thing.
And hard to achieve.

And my answer to this question,
when was I last still?,
tends to be when I am set apart.

What Should I Do Then?

Posted on October 7, 2019 by kdn004

A Sermon for our Gospel Choir Sunday,
Rooke Chapel Congregation, 10/6/19

1 Corinthians 14: 1-15

Our semester’s theme,
as many of you know by now,
is big questions.
And it’s likely, upon reading our text today from
1 Corinthians,
that you had a few questions of your own,
including, perhaps,
“What is Paul prattling on about?”
And, perhaps also,
“Why would Kurt choose this text?”
And finally, I imagine,
“Can’t we get back to the music?”

To the last of these questions I say, “Yes, very shortly.”
But I do wish to address the first two ever-so-briefly first,
if you’ll allow me.

The Corinthian Church –
which Paul loved, and also probably hated,
had a problem.
Actually, they had a lot of problems.

What is Family?

Posted on October 7, 2019October 7, 2019 by kdn004

Luke 15: 1- 32, Sunday 9/29/19, Rooke Chapel Congregation

Family is a big word.
A sticky word.
For many of us, a given.
A rock.
Perhaps for you,
the word brings up memories of loud dinners around shared tables,
or quiet moments, vacations, sporting events,
love and connection and joy.
Perhaps for you,
the concept is more fraught,
strained and complicated and hard.
Perhaps painful,
or full of longing,
or regret.

For the students among us,
there are, I’m sure, manifold changes in your relationships
to parents and siblings.
New experiences of mature connection,
new possibilities,
new difficulties,

and, of course, for many during the college years,
we experience grief first-hand for the first time,
when we lose a close friend, professor, grandparent, or parent.
This, too, is family.

And it turns out,
our scripture’s story about family,
is more nuanced than we might care to think.