What I Read in 2021

Here is a list of the books I read in 2021. This is more for my records, but I would recommend most, but not all, of them.

1. 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant
2. 1356 by Bernard Cornwell
3. A Sense of Honor by James Webb
4. A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
5. After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
6. American Street by Ibi Zoboi
7. Black Buck: A Novel by Mateo Askaripour
8. Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth
9. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
10. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
11. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
12. Bound for Gold by William Martin
13. Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing by Diana Lind
14. Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
15. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
16. Cloak of Deception by James Luceno
17. Dare to Dream: Creating a God-Sized Mission Statement for Your Life by Mike Slaughter
18. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
19. Do Not Live Afraid: Faith in a Fearful World by John Indermark
20. Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
21. Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
22. Eight Life-Enriching Practices of United Methodists by Hal Knight
23. Escalante's Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest by David Roberts
24. Exploring the Seven Elements of the Lord's Prayer: A Thought-Provoking Journey Into the Practical and Biblical Principles of the Prayer Given to Us by Christ Jesus by Erik Douglas Randolph
25. Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson
26. Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose
27. God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God by Carolyn Jane Bohler
28. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
29. Hail Mary by Andy Weir
30. Heretic by Bernard Cornwell
31. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
32. Hiroshima by John Hersey
33. His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meachem
34. I Alone Can Fix It: Donald Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carole Leonnig and Phillip Rucker
35. In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick
36. Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
37. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
38. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
39. Lies We Believe About God by Wm. Paul Young
40. Life in a Medieval Castle by Brenda Ralph Lewis
41. Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies
42. Living a Life that Matters by Harold S. Kushner
43. Living the Lord's Prayer by Rowan Williams and Wendy Beckett
44. Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life by William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas
45. Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
46. Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera
47. Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter
48. Mary Magdalene: A Biography by Bruce Chilton
49. Matrix by Lauren Groll
50. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
51. Mingling with the Enemy: A Social Survival Guide for Our Divided Era by Jeanne Martinet
52. Minimalism for Families by Zoe Kim
53. Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
54. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough
55. Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth by Greg L. Hawkins
56. Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
57. Of Logs and Stone: The Buildings of the Los Alamos Ranch School and Bathtub Row by Craig Martin
58. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice: The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood and Travis Thrasher
59. On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
60. On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus by David Waltner-Toews
61. Outlawed by Anna North
62. Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences by Tiffany Jana and Matthew Freeman
63. Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 by Stephen E. Ambrose
64. Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followes of Jesus in Legend and History by Bart Ehrman
65. Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship by Janet Wolf
66. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
67. Questions God Asks Us by Trevor Hudson
68. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
69. Searching for Sunday: Leaving, Loving and Finding the Church by Rachel Held-Evans
70. Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry
71. She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
72. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
73. Simple Governance: Liberating Your Church for Mission by Stephan Ross
74. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green
75. Sooley by John Grisham
76. Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life by Marjorie J. Thompson
77. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
78. Stride: Creating a Discipleship Pathway for Your Church by Mike Schreiner and Ken Willard
79. Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
80. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
81. T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez
82. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
83. That Left Turn at Albuquerque by Scott Phillips
84. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company by John Rossman
85. The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For by David McCullough
86. The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwel
87. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
88. The Battle for Civil Rights, Or, How Los Alamos Became a County by Marjorie Bell Chambers
89. The Bomber Mafia by Macolm Gladwell
90. The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA's Challenger Disaster by Kevin Cook
91. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
92. The Eagles of Heart Mountain: The True Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistence in World War II America by Bradford Pearson
93. The End of Youth Ministry?: Why Parents Don't Really Care about Youth Groups and What Youth Workers Should Do about It by Andrew Root
94. The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
95. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
96. The Greatest Prayer by John Dominic Crossan
97. The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction by Peter Rollins
98. The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values by Ben Howe
99. The Jewish Background to the Lord's Prayer by Brad Young
100. The Kindness Challenge: Thirty Days to Improve Any Relationship by Shaunti Feldhahn
101. The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
102. The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking
103. The Lord and His Prayer by NT Wright
104. The Lord's Prayer by C. Clifton Black
105. The Lord's Prayer by Mary Lou Redding
106. The Lord's Prayer: Jesus Teaches Us How to Pray by Mary Lou Redding
107. The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James
108. The Morning and the Evening by Ken Follett
109. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
110. The Night Lake: A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief by Liz Tichenor
111. The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
112. The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
113. The Physics of Star Wars by Patrick Johnson
114. The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
115. The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord's Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
116. The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century by Robert D. Kaplan
117. The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson
118. The Sinking of the Bismark by William L. Shirer
119. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
120. The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones
121. The Truth about Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden
122. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam
123. Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good by Timothy Zahn
124. Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump by David Rothkopf
125. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
126. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics by Jeremy Schaap
127. Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
128. Valley of the Guns: The Pleasant Valley War and the Trauma of Violence by Eduardo Obreg Pagan
129. We are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
130. What Do We Do with the Bible by Richard Rohr
131. What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?: Discover a Life Filled with Purpose and Joy Through the Secrets of Jewish Wisdom by Michal Oshman
132. White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler
133. Working Class Rage by Tex Sample
134. Year Book by Seth Rogen
135. You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost
136. You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacy: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Temple Tossed

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 2:41-52:

I remember one Christmas morning when I was young, although I don’t remember how old I was. We had just finished unwrapping our presents, but were still sitting at the base of our Christmas tree surrounded by the gifts and detritus that Christmas morning usually brings for small children, I turned to my mother and asked when Easter was.  My mother is here today and she can verify this.  The reason this question was important was because I knew the best part of Christmas was over. Having turkey was never my idea of a good time, and the next time when we would receive presents and candy was at Easter, and so I wanted to know how long I was going to have to wait.  Today’s scripture reading seems to be moving in that same direction that I was all those many years ago.  Today many people will take down their Christmas trees, guests will begin to go home, and Christmas music can no longer be heard on the radio. For many Christmas is still in the air and I’m sure that many of us will be going home for more Christmas leftovers.  After all, it was yesterday, and technically it’s only the second day of Christmas, but yet here we find ourselves reading and talking about a story not of Jesus as an infant, but instead as a young boy of 12.  Kids sure do grow up fast these days.

Now this might seem like a strange passage to read on the first Sunday after Christmas, and it is, although it is the assigned reading for today, but it’s also just a strange passage in general especially for Luke. That’s true first because this story makes no sense in relation to Luke’s birth narrative which precedes it.  After all, it is in Luke’s narrative that Mary is visited by an angel and told that the child she will carry is special, and Mary responds by giving us the magnificat, her beautiful poetic response.  It is in Luke’s gospel that John the Baptist, who has his own miraculous conception story, is a cousin of Jesus who leaps in his mother’s womb when his mother Elizabeth and Mary meet.  It is in Luke’s narrative that the shepherds are sent to Bethlehem by an angel and come to pay homage to the child in a manger, and we are told “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.”  And it is in Luke’s narrative that when Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple shortly after his birth and make an offering for their first born son that Anna and Simeon both make claims about who Jesus is and what he means to Israel.  And yet if we just read today’s passage none of this seems to have taken place, or if it did then Mary and Joseph have totally forgotten about them after only twelve years, which seems very unlikely.  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father. This story just simply doesn’t match up with what has come before it. 

Abiding in the Fields

Here is my message for Christmas Eve. The scripture was Luke 2:1-20: 

They say that familiarity breed contempt. But what familiarity also breeds is comfortableness, as people are attracted to things that are familiar, and when things are familiar to us, and comfortable for us, we also tend to think we know them really well, so much so that we might stop paying attention to the details in the story. I think the same is true for the Christmas story. Most of us have probably heard that passage from Luke about the birth of Jesus for what seems like hundreds of times. I mean even if we only heard it every year in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, as it’s what Linus quotes from when he wants everyone to know the meaning of Christmas, we could have heard it at least 56 times since it’s debut in 1965. And when we stop paying attention because we know it, we can overlook things or even add things to it because it just has to be there, because we know it’s there. So, for example, we talk about Mary riding into Bethlehem on a donkey, but there are no donkey’s in the story, and definitely not Dominic the donkey. We have other barnyard animals in our nativity set. No mention of them in the story. We have three wise men arriving, and some of you may remember their names as Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, but not only are they not named, but we don’t even know how many there were. We say three because there were three gifts, but let’s be honest that men are not always the best at getting social etiquette correct, and so it’s entirely possible that some of them went in together on gifts, or maybe even had the temerity to show up without a gift at all. And then there are the parts of the story we just want to skip over all together.

Blue Christmas: Joy Comes in the Morning

Here is my sermon for our Blue Christmas service. The text was Isaiah 40:1-11 and Luke 1:67-79:

This is a picture of a painting that hangs in my office and I really like it. It was painted by Irma Fath, who was a member of the last church I served, and she was largely self-taught. We have two other of her paintings of New Mexico landscapes that hang in our dining room. But when Irma was 94, I believe, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she decided she had had a good life and didn’t seek any treatment. In a memorial service here earlier this fall I talked about that there used to be a Christian concept called the art of dying. It encouraged people to think about their mortality, not as an act of morbidity, but to think about it as an act of faithful living, to plan how they wanted to die in order to be an example of the Christian faith and the promise of eternal life. It’s not really practiced or talked about today because as a culture we want to ignore the whole idea of death and grief and push them to the side. But as deaths go, Irma had a good death’s journey and a good death. And in one of the last times I saw her she said she wanted me to pick out one painting that I liked and take it, and this is the one I chose.

And what I really like about this painting, first is that it looks cold, and I love cold weather, but it’s also because of the question this painting poses to me. I don’t know if it’s already winter and this woman is stopping to pause and look at these beautiful flowers outside of this shop, sort of being reminded of the beauty of the flowers and the promise they remind her of a spring to come. Or is it already spring, and thus appropriate to have flowers sitting out, and she is out in one of those cold snaps we always get that reminds us that winter is not done with us yet. And so there is this tension of the cold and dark of winter and the life and beauty and warmth of spring all sort of tied up together here in this moment. It’s that tension that’s tied up in this night.

Fear For

Here is my message from yesterday. The text was Matthew 2:13-18:

So far we have heard several angelic pronouncements about the coming birth of Jesus, or of John who will prepare the way. We had the announcement to Zechariah, and we were told he was terrified. We heard the announcement to the shepherds as we set the nativity today, and we are told they are terrified. And the angel’s response to them? Do not be afraid. We also have the announcement to Mary in Luke, and to her betrothed Joseph in Matthew, and although we are not told that they are afraid, which I think is significant, they too are told not to be afraid. But there is one another person who plays a crucial role that we are told is frightened when he hears word of Jesus’ birth, and that is Herod, whose official title is King of the Jews, although his announcement is not from an angelic messenger,. And so I have been using a quote from Max Lucado who says that “fear, at its center, is about a perceived loss of control.” And so, if that is true that it would make perfect sense that Herod is frightened because what the wise men do when they arrive, and please note that it doesn’t actually say how many there are there, is that they ask is where they can find the child who is born king of the Jews? And so that begins the trouble.

Herod sends the wise men on their way and tells them to come back and tell him where the child is so he can go and pay homage, which we can guess is probably not true, and as it turns out we know is not what he wants. But the wise men are warned not to go back to Herod and so go a different way, and Joseph too is warned to flee Egypt. And so Joseph takes Jesus and Mary and they flee during the night making their way to Egypt in order to protect themselves from Herod. And because he appears to be thwarted by the wise men, we are told that Herod is furious or extremely angry. And out of his anger he strikes out at Bethlehem. Fear and anger, although different emotions, are not unrelated to each other.

Fearless Living

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:26-33, 46-55

When it comes to fear, Halloween is sort of an amazing holiday when we look at it from a 30,000 foot level, because what we do is to turn on lights and invite all the gremlins and goblins to come into the light and then rather than shrieking in fear, we instead ooh and awe over their costumes and tell them how great they look, maybe even how scary they look, and then give them candy and send them off to be bathed in someone else’s light. How great is that? What if the world acted like that all the time? Because normally we shrink in fear, we turn off our lights and lock the door to the gremlins of the world, or those who are different, those who don’t meet the standards we want them to have. We keep them at arms distance and away from us and we fear them. But a holiday that is in some ways to celebrate the fear in actuality works to overcome it, which was part of the purpose. And Christmas is working to try and do the same as well, because the refrain we continually hear from the angels in their proclamation about the coming of Jesus the messiah is do not be afraid, and so that is our theme for this Advent season of learning how not to be afraid.

And so last week we heard the story of the announcement to Zechariah that his wife would become pregnant in her old age and give birth to a son who would become John the Baptist. And even though he has been praying for this to happen, it doesn’t seem he actually believed it would happen because he questions Gabriel about the reality of it. And because of that questioning he is struck silent, unable to speak for the nine month pregnancy of his wife Elizabeth. But the other piece of his story is that we are told that when he sees the angel Gabriel as Zechariah is serving in the Temple that he is terrified. And Gabriel’s response? “Do not be afraid.” And so then let’s compare that against today’s passages.