An obnoxious donkey is blocking your way on the path to success. That beast of burden brays and bucks and you just can’t get the stubborn beast to move.

The only thing that stands between you and your goal is that obstinate donkey.

Before you go kicking and beating the donkey to move it out of your way, you better take the time to discern why the donkey is blocking your way.

People who possess eternal life are not afraid to risk what they can’t lose. The question we should ask is not the teacher’s “who is my neighbor?” but the more expansive “to whom should I become a neighbor?”

After much mental and spiritual despair, I am now confident, even optimistic, that there is a way forward. I have the privilege of witnessing the beginnings of it happening right here in York, PA. It is a tenuous start, but it is a beginning nonetheless.

We can build a beautiful city and I believe God wants us to do it together. This construction requires the recognition of four emerging problems in public life: outsourcing, ambivalence, intolerance, and tribalism.

Easter Sunday is still the ultimate reset for the followers of Jesus. Just as the Church was awakened to a bright new reality 2,000 years ago, so too, the modern Church should embrace again the life-giving power of the resurrection of Jesus.

I propose there are several affirmations the Church can make that will chart a new trajectory for generations to come.

If you pay attention to the vast sum of human suffering in the world, it surely must break your heart.

The question each of us must ponder every day is this: What am I doing about the issue that is breaking my heart?

Good Friday is a day we should allow our hearts to be broken again.

God delights in reconciling estranged people. From the first pages of the Bible to the last, God repairs and restores broken relationships.

This theme of reconciling estranged groups, specifically ethnic ones, is so dominant in the New Testament, specifically in Paul’s letters, that I almost missed the forest for the trees.

On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus forced people into a perplexing dilemma as they tried to understand His life and teaching. Was He a prophet, a triumphant king, compassionate healer, or was He a blasphemous fraud who created turmoil?

2,000 years later on this Palm Sunday on March 28th, 2021, we still are struggling to understand this Man of Nazareth.

Progressive and conservative Christians are locked in a divisive battle over who more accurately represents Jesus. Both groups claim they are the ones who faithfully emulate His life and teachings. It is the other side that gets Jesus wrong.

Anti-Asian attacks around the country have been on the rise during the pandemic. Hatred is being directed at people of Asian descent for the irrational reason that they are somehow to be blamed for COVID-19. We cannot allow these injustices to stand, especially in the Church.

I am not quitting the Church anytime soon, and it is not due to a shortage of plausible reasons.

In my 44 years of life as a Church insider, I have often been dismayed and horrified by the Church’s behavior: the leadership failures, sex scandals, clergy abuse of children, authoritarianism, blatant hypocrisy, judgmental attitudes, idolatrous alignment with American politics, consumerism, discomfort with science, poor treatment of women, flirtation with conspiracy theories, unwillingness to confront racism, lack of compassion for the poor, etc.

Will Christians stand with Jesus in bringing life to the world, or will we go down with a destructive political machine that is leading our nation to division, disaster, and the death of our great nation?