Mark 10:46-52 affirms the basic tenets of the disabled people’s movement, that the barriers faced by persons with needs who want access to wellbeing are often humanly constructed barriers.

Just now we are grateful for Cory Booker,
for his long-running speech,
for his testimony to good governance,
for his integrity that does not flinch from truth-telling.

In the wake of this moment in our shared democratic experiment,
we may hope and expect positive response from all of our people,
with affirmation for poor people alongside rich folk,
with glad acknowledgement of men and women and free gender delineations,
with full participation by the vulnerable and a refusal of their dismissal or disposal.

There can be little doubt that when we learn to reread the Bible, we will inescapably learn to read our own national history with more discerning eyes in a way that invites us to think again about our current national role in the world.

 Thus I judge that the pastors, preachers, and teachers of the church have a distinct possibility and wondrous opportunity to articulate a world other than the one subject to the force of the Nihil.

For much too long, the church has made wellbeing (salvation!) a personal, individualistic subject. But of course the truth is quite otherwise.

It is exactly that attentiveness and restorative work [of Christ] to which the church is summoned in its resistance to impatient ruthless disposal by the dominant economic community.

We sing in joy, in resolve, and in defiance. [...] We sing in glad welcome, unlike the commercial world that is eager to return to business as usual.

A defining claim in our common life, and therefore defining subject for gospel reflection, is the alienation and hoped-for reconciliation between fathers and sons.

[The tenth commandment is] a dire warning against economic practices and land policies that permit the strong to occupy and control more and more of creation at the expense of needy neighbors, and at a cost to the wellbeing of creation.

...Jesus restored to full life those who had been dismissed, discounted, and discarded by an economy too busy to notice, an economy bolstered and legitimated by religious claims made for and by “better” people.

The work is to narrate, and narrate again, the pain of the world, the injustice of society, and the prospect for relief and recovery.

The practice of Christmas is not simply much bell ringing that echoes the goodness of God. The news is that God has heard the clanging of the chains of bondage and has moved against [it]…

Peacemaking requires the Lordly graciousness of God; it also insists on the daily work of adjudicating the neighborhood to assure that all may share in a common good that provides the necessities for a viable, secure life.

The good news entrusted to the church is that the God of the Gospel is indeed to us as an attentive receptive mother, as an attentive, receptive friend.

...it will be important that the church be engaged in that daily assault on denial, precisely because it is the truth, and only the truth, that can make us free.

Even when it feels like we're alone, God reminds us: you have allies, you have purpose, and you have work to do.

So imagine—a church of hope that gathers yet again to affirm the abundance, hospitality, forgiveness, and peace-making reality of God.

The good news is that we are not and need not be propelled by the negating work of God, of Satan, of the devil, or the id.

Without a capacity for embarrassment, every greedy selfish action is accepted as legitimate.