Author: Kyle
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Introducing ‘The Way of Love with Bishop Michael Curry’
At this point I’m almost not sure what to say to you about the great privilege of developing, co-producing, and editing The Way of Love with Bishop Michael Curry. It’s a very strange experience for something to be at least semi-secret for such a long time and then suddenly come on the scene with hundreds…
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Speech, understanding, action: A Pentecost sermon
A sermon for Pentecost, Year C (Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27)) Isn’t it interesting that the tower doesn’t get destroyed? That’s the detail I kept coming back to as I studied the scriptures this week for our great feast of the Holy Spirit. The mythic and apparently unified human family…
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Seeing and experiencing the consolation of faith
There’s a now-defunct Biblical art initiative that I dearly wish had not gone offline a few years ago. Old and New was [quote] “a collaborative design project … providing a platform for contemporary graphic artists to exhibit works themed on Biblical stories and passages.” I especially appreciated this explicit value of the project: privilege honesty over…
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Peace as presence in the spiritual life
Like all of us, I am an idolator—both in ways I am aware of, and doubtless in even more I have yet to get my head around. The object of what would seem to be my highest devotion is both a material condition and a state of mind. Like the root of much individual and…
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The multivalent Lamb of God
A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30 ** In January of 2011, I spent two weeks in Rome on a study trip, pondering the paradoxes of the Eternal City. My most fond and vivid and absurd memory of the trip took place on January 21 just…
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Find your ‘Mary moment’
A sermon for Easter Sunday, Year C: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18 ** I had some friends in and after college who went to work on political campaigns full-time. It took them weeks to recover from the post-election funk when their candidates lost. And who can blame them? They put so much…
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A sermon for Good Friday
A sermon for Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42 My teacher and later colleague Tony Lewis once talked to our class about the “holy incomprehensibility” of the liturgy. He didn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t understand the words of these ancient prayers. I think he meant that the density of them…
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Salvation all the while: Palm Sunday according to Luke
Since late January I’ve been preaching weekly as a long-term supply priest at Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. It’s been mostly from the aisle with no notes, but you can watch/listen here. For Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter, at least, I’ve returned to manuscripts … A sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C: Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah…
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Introducing Faith-Adjacent
(Inbox-friendly link to episode.) This is the pilot episode of Faith-Adjacent, a podcast about my ongoing dissertation research at Teachers College, Columbia University. I prepared it both to launch the eventual series itself and to share at the Ethnography and Education Forum February 22-23 at the University of Pennsylvania. For more context, read the brief…
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Interview training resource: Learning to ask good questions
When you listen with curiosity to people talking about work they love, they get positively radiant. Crazy but wonderful day here in the research trenches at @TeachersCollege. — Kyle Matthew Oliver (@kmoliver) March 8, 2018 Interviewing people is kind of amazing, right? I’m inspired by journalists shining a light on our fraying democracy, researchers discovering…