When Our Words Become Believable
This week, Peter, Bartholomew, Dolly Parton, Canada, and an empty family chair all asked the same question.
Friends,
This week began with Peter giving Jesus the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It is a magnificent confession. It is also only the beginning. Peter would spend the rest of his life discovering that the words were true enough to rearrange his loyalties, expose his fear, correct his instincts, and eventually cost him everything.
That question followed us all week. Did we mean what we said? Bartholomew carried a prejudice about Nazareth, but he was honest enough to come and see. I wrote an apology to Canada because neighborly love does not become optional when nations are involved. Dolly Parton reminded us that words become believable when a life gives them flesh. Then Friday’s open letter brought the question home: What does devotion to Jesus require when another allegiance is damaging the people seated around our own tables?
The subjects looked different. The spiritual demand was remarkably consistent. Christianity cannot remain a collection of correct sentences. Our confession must eventually become visible in the way we listen, spend, forgive, welcome, tell the truth, use power, and love people who have every reason to wonder whether we still do.
A Brief Request
Message From the Margins now has more than 10,000 members, and 2.87% currently support this work with a paid subscription. That support funds the research, writing, podcast, videos, and new teaching projects I am building for this community.
We are incredibly close to our next milestone.
Can we make today the day we cross 3%… Please?
If this work helps you keep faith with the Gospel in a bewildering time, and a paid subscription fits within your life, I would be deeply grateful for your support.
Your Brother in Christ,
This Week at Message From the Margins
Before Episode Two Arrives: How Did the Bible Become the Bible?
Episode Two arrives Monday, so this is the perfect weekend to catch up with the first episode of the podcast. We followed an emperor, a woman carrying the Letter to the Romans, disputed books, forgotten communities, and the long human process through which the Church recognized the Scriptures it had already begun to receive as holy.
If you have ever been told that the Bible simply dropped from heaven with a table of contents attached, this episode offers a better story. It is stranger, more human, and, I think, more faithful.
Watch or listen to Episode One
Arriving Monday!!!!
On Monday, we are going somewhere most Christians have never had the chance to visit: the first generations of the Church, before cathedrals, denominations, seminaries, or even a completed New Testament existed. How did a small and vulnerable movement, scattered across the Roman Empire and frequently forced to worship behind closed doors, become the Church we recognize today?
In “How Did the Church Become the Church?”, we will enter the homes where the first Christians gathered, descend into the Catacombs of Priscilla, hear one of the earliest surviving descriptions of Sunday worship, and discover how bishops, priests, deacons, creeds, sacraments, and Christian traditions began to take shape. It is a remarkable story filled with courageous women, secret gatherings, dangerous journeys, fierce disagreements, and ordinary people trying to remain faithful to Jesus. Episode Two of the Message From the Margins podcast arrives Monday, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
For the Love of God, Please Don’t Lose Your Family Over Donald Trump
Friday’s piece began as something I thought other people might send to their relatives. The more I worked on it, the less comfortable I became asking anyone to assume that risk. Once I allowed it to become an open letter, I could breathe again.
It is addressed to people who have allowed devotion to Donald Trump to damage their closest relationships, but it is written in the presence of everyone who has loved them, argued with them, prayed for them, and wondered whether the person they remember is still reachable. The choir has been grieving. This one is for them too.
Dolly Parton’s Greatest Sermon
Dolly Parton has made her living with words, but her life made those words believable. Her generosity, literacy work, loyalty to the people who formed her, and refusal to make compassion complicated offer a sermon many churches badly need.
This piece is not an argument that Dolly is perfect. It is an observation that people recognize good news when it arrives with books for children, dignity for workers, and help that does not first demand an ideological examination.
Read Dolly Parton’s Greatest Sermon
From the Archives
Can I Vent to You for a Minute?
The algorithm is discipling young men every hour of every day. Much of what it teaches them is domination, contempt, grievance, and a counterfeit Christianity built to baptize all three. This essay asks what happens when dirtbag theology becomes more available than patient, embodied Christian formation.
In the Week Ahead
Episode Two of Message From the Margins arrives Monday: How the Church Became the Church. We will move from the formation of Scripture into the complicated, courageous, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes maddening history of the people who received it.
I am also continuing the work behind our first live Bible study, planned for mid-to-late September, where we will spend time with the Prodigal Son. I will share the details as soon as the date and format are ready.
And Let Us Pray…
God of truth and mercy,
Save us from saying beautiful things about You
while becoming careless with the people You love.
Make our confession visible in our conduct.
Teach us to listen before defending,
to repent before explaining,
to serve without needing applause,
and to tell the truth without surrendering tenderness.
Protect the families strained by political devotion.
Sit beside those carrying grief into quiet rooms.
Soften the hearts that anger has hardened.
Give courage to those who must set boundaries,
patience to those who still hope for reconciliation,
and peace to those who have done all they safely can.
Let our words become bread.
Let our beliefs become mercy.
Let our allegiance to Jesus be recognized
in the way we love the people before us.
Amen.
How Can We Pray for You?
What are you carrying into the coming week? Leave your prayer request in the comments, whether it concerns your family, health, work, faith, or something you cannot yet name. If you see another person’s request, please pause and pray for them before moving on. I take all of your prayers and collect them into a leather bound book I carry with me, they are prayed for each day at Mass and when I pray the office.
May Christ meet each request with His presence, give strength where answers have not yet come, and remind every person in this community that they do not carry their burdens alone.
Amen.
And if one of this week’s pieces gave language to something someone you love has been carrying, please share it with them. Sometimes the kindest invitation is simply: “This helped me feel less alone. I thought it might help you too.”