Yes, I'm a minister. No, I don't have a church.

Wednesday, May 10 Presbyterian Center Chapel 1 Peter 2:2-10
 I hate it when people preach about buildings, and often using this passage. Buildings are so 1950s. It’s 20-freaking-17 and we’re going to talk about this cornerstone concept. And buildings. I hate myself. But it turns out infrastructure is a real thing still, so here goes. Not being in construction or engineering or architecture, I had to look this up. Using a stone to anchor a corner is a big deal. The cornerstone has to have an exact 90-degree angle. You might need to flip it around or try another stone to find that right angle. Buildings made of stone are beautiful and sturdy. A solid foundation. After all, the author says, this is the “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” This time in the early church is about building identity. A solid foundational identity as a pe...

The following is the text of a sermon preached at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on February 17, 2017. The Scripture reading is  Luke 18:1-8 . Persistent Women I’m tired, y’all. I know you might be tired too. We all have a grind, whatever it is, learning, or teaching, or writing, or attending committee meetings, or making sure our parents are okay, or raising kids, or working to pay the bills, or discerning our call, or being active in our communities. Oh, and if we’re partnered, keeping that whole relationship healthy and whole, too. Most of us do five or six of these things at a time. And having a government in upheaval, whether or not we agree with the policies, is stressful on top of all that. Some of us pray more frequently nowadays. This parable from Jesus is about prayer. About the “need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Most people I know who come from religious families speak of the women who raised them who are fervent, faithful pray-ers...

Have you ever been in a space where people speak movingly about the faith of their grandmothers? I always think, “oh, that’s interesting you have Christian grandmothers who talk about their faith.” My two paternal grandmothers were secular Jews. I saw convictions, not religious practice. My maternal grandmother was Presbyterian, but she certainly didn’t talk about it with me. I saw her actions more than anything else. Yuriko Nishita , my maternal grandmother and my last living grandparent, lived among us from January 31, 1926 to November 29th, 2016. I do not have all the facts about my grandmother, and I may have gotten some of the details wrong. What I do possess is my experience of her. She loved me and made sure I knew it, and she was salty. Whoever came up with the stereotype that Asian American women are meek and quiet probably never met anyone in my family. Over half of the women have (or had) sharp tongues. In 2010, I told her I had gotten a new job in Atlanta after ye...