Rev. Liz Goodman: Lenox & Monterey UCC
267 episodes - English - Latest episode: 21 days ago - ★★★★★ - 13 ratingsLiz is the pastor of two United Church of Christ congregations, both in western Massachusetts, one in Monterey and the other in Lenox, and this is a podcast of the preaching from those two pulpits.
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Episodes
What Are We Doing?
January 29, 2019 23:04 - 25 minutes - 28.2 MBIt's been forever, it seems, that we've reading old texts and interpreting them for meaning. It's a bizarre practice, one you might think we can get over. But in the age of the Twitter mob. it might be newly important.
Messed Up
January 29, 2019 22:49 - 18 minutes - 20.8 MBWhat does it matter what we believe? Nothing, if our belief never takes on matter. That's Gnosticism, and it just never seems to go away.
Epiphany Sunday 2019
January 11, 2019 16:04 - 25 minutes - 27.9 MBI'll admit, I can't relate to the fear "all Jerusalem" had as regards the magi. But I can muster fear at the prospect of life together now playing out amidst a social context of everything thrown into question, every once clear thing now thrown into doubt. When old values, long settled, have been upset; when established truths meet with deep skepticism (and, worse, eventual cynicism): that's pretty frightening. If we come not only not to know what we long have known, but also not to know how...
Christmas Eve 2018
January 02, 2019 22:01 - 8.31 MB"The birth of Christ invites us into such astonishment at life's loveliness, presses upon us the distressing awareness that it could all go suddenly wrong, pushes us to the edge of all we can muster: the awe, the hope, the fear, the wonder. And by this, God calls us--the mewing cry of a newborn, which makes all else secondary to the demand of succor and love."
About to Get Real
January 02, 2019 21:56 - 14 minutes - 16 MBThis encounter between old Elizabeth, nor pregnant with John, and young Mary, now pregnant with Jesus: it's so very real. It's almost embarrassing--that it's there in scripture, that we're to talk of it in worship, bodies doing what no willpower could make them do but which they do because that's what they're made to do. women's bodies, burgeoning, bulbous and weighty, bone and brain and fluid and pain...This is so strangely,m astonishingly real."
The Sessions Verses
January 02, 2019 20:25 - 23 minutes - 26.5 MB"See, God's authority and human authority, though related, aren't always in accord. It's an obvious point. It's funny it's lost on Jeff Sessions. To say otherwise is to make the state equal in power and authority to the divine. And you know who really hates this sort of assertion, that the state is equal to God? Evangelical Christians..."
On Power
January 02, 2019 20:19 - 22 minutes - 25.2 MB"His power flowed out of him like that woman's power flowed out of her, and depleting as as each might have been to the host, the effect his had on his environment was as evident as the effect hers would have had, though to her shame. Her flow kept her an outcast; his flow gathered crowds--until, that is, they'd in effect have traded places, him, bleeding and ashamed on the cross and her restored to full standing in her community...I love that understanding of him--absolute presence, immedia...
Unnatural
December 15, 2018 21:56 - 19 minutes - 21.8 MB"We've been behaving for decades as if civilization is won, and therefore needs nothing more of us. We've been flirting for the length of my lifetime with cynicism, nihilism, as if we can take a tire-iron to the body politic just for the hell of it and not actually catch hell."
Grow Up
December 15, 2018 20:31 - 22 minutes - 24.7 MBAs to the question of how to live together, "...it's a lot harder to figure when it involves isolated, atomized individuals crashing into one another, trying to elbow their way into and out of belonging, all without any framework or storyline to give the struggle shape or purpose..."
Gnawing Question
December 15, 2018 20:21 - 23 minutes - 26.3 MB"Human beings have grown and evolved to respond sociably to the human voice--to hear in it a subtlety of meaning and nuance of intent, to express in it a desire to connect and to be understood rather than just to dominate, humiliate, and win."
Of Flatterers and Friends
December 14, 2018 20:42 - 21 minutes - 23.8 MBThis following a week when Kanye visited the Oval Office and mutual kissing-up ensued.
Loopholes
December 14, 2018 19:40 - 18 minutes - 20.9 MBWhen taxes get better shelter than many people of the world and billionaires would have us be sensible.
ALL Saints' Day
December 14, 2018 19:21 - 21 minutes - 24 MB"...every person a tourist, every dwelling a stopover, the whole world now a place for casual consuming rather than investing and taking care..."
Veterans' Day
December 14, 2018 17:54 - 12 minutes - 14.3 MBWherein we test a theory at the Temple treasury.
Words: Matter
December 14, 2018 17:48 - 19 minutes - 21.1 MBPilate asked, "What is truth?" and in so doing he revealed that in him there is nothing to be revealed.
Start at the Very Ending
December 14, 2018 16:54 - 15 minutes - 17.1 MBWith Luke, we begin at the end, a glance at the apocalypse. But what would it have us do?
No Regerts
December 14, 2018 15:40 - 25 minutes - 28.2 MBRegret, repentance, second thoughts: why does John insist these things are crucial?