Culture Crossings l where culture+justice+church intersect
An Invitation to the Church to Choose Justice and Peace Over Polarization PC: Sincerely Media Justice stands half-naked in the upper floor of a church in Copenhagen, Denmark. Peace poses beside her, in an equal state of disarray. Two statues tucked away into relative obscurity — nearly forgotten stones in a church, but they deliver a relevant [...]
From Strangers At Strange Tables From the Swedish-accented tones of the formidable Greta Thunberg and her call to environmental responsibility to the political dilemmas in more nations than we care to count — uncertainty and controversey sit everywhere like kegs of gunpowder with wicks. Here, at the end of this decade, there are whispers of revolution and [...]
This is part of my Strangers At Strange Tables series In truth, the story of Christ’s coming loses much of its value when we tuck the figures away in a manger and ignore the interruption of hospitality which is evident everywhere. Like most other nativity scenes, our manger sits in storage for 11 months of [...]
The Blue Bird Cafe is tucked into Budapest’s historic Jewish Quarter. It is Euro-whimsical with spirally staircases and bird-infused wallpaper percolating caffeinated warmth. Tourists like its vibe. Locals like its roast. The beat of old-school music can almost erase the memory of the 1940’s when the place of this cafe was a hole of death. [...]
For Freedom Sunday | September 22, 2019 Nobody picks me up and swings me around as soon as she sees me. I ask, ‘Are we dancing?’ And she laughs at my question. There is joy in her eyes and I know that she has been waiting for me to come out. I know, because she [...]
“Where ideas have sex.” It’s one of the myriad of edgy stickers on the window, but it grabs my attention as we step through the door. Just inches into this world, I’m breathing different air and wondering what Jesus is saying to me here. Jay and I are visiting a co-working space in the heart [...]
The media and the politicians weave a story much different than the one that I will tell you here. Where fear has cunningly colored words like 'refugee' and 'Syria', we have long stopped believing that good people cross borders in search of safe homes. We wonder at their motives. We believe the worst. In the [...]
Today, across the globe, many Christ followers will line up at altars to be marked on the forehead or the hand with ashes. It is Ash Wednesday. It is the first day of Lent - this plodding and sometimes painful wandering towards the brokenness of the cross that culminates in the miracle of the resurrection. [...]
Unfortunately, the story of the advent of Christ into planet Earth is a problematic script in these days of fearing the stranger.
This advent thought is based upon Luke 1:26-38 We belly laugh as we wind through the cobbled streets of Budapest and settle into a little Cajun spot called Soul Food. My colleague who is also an ordained woman has just come from a Christian meeting where she identified as a minister. A man from the [...]
By my count, Covid has been exerting its psychological power over us for 10 months now and the most hopeful estimates predict another 6 months to go until vaccines begin to weave their immunity magic. I’ve found my mind struggling to imagine and to dream about how we move through the ministry space a year [...]
“The biggest threat of the new coronavirus outbreak has shifted from China to Europe, where large populations of people may have been exposed, according to Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” I live in Europe. Two-thirds of my heart lives in Europe (currently, 4 Sunbergs are in Europe [...]
Our understanding of true hospitality requires a theological shift: Hospitality is not what we do for people, it is how we choose to perceive them and how we frame our attitudes towards them. True hospitality, ancient-church hospitality, Jesus-hospitality is about creating space — at our tables, in our lives, in our hearts — in such a way that people know that ‘this is a place where I belong and where I have value.’
My crisscrossing of nations these last 25 years have yielded more than one story of interesting border crossings, but, one night on a foreign border holds a traumatic place of precedence. In my mind’s eye, I am highlighted by bright lights, spread-eagle against a van while a female guard roughly pats down my body. She [...]
teanna sunberg 