God

Dogs: A Theological Palindrome

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at the Congregational Chuch of Middlebury (VT) on August 3, 2025

Texts: Genesis 2:15–22; 1 Corinthians 13

Friends, in my time with you all this summer, I have talked about some weighty considerations to being Christian in our particular moment. In June, I suggested that the most important witness we could offer in this divisive and dehumanizing time is to stand for the capaciousness in the Christian Gospel, the Good News that God loves all of us, that God desires relationship with all of us, and that God calls us to exercise this wide embrace in our relationships with others as an antidote to the hate all around us. Last month, I suggested that liberal Christianity ought to embrace a robust role in our political life, even engaging in partisan debates when it is clear that particular parties and politicians stand for values we consider godly and others clearly do not.

Today I want to talk with you about a dimension of the Christian life that is at least as important as these topics, one that some of you practice with righteous enthusiasm day after day, but that others of you may find a challenge to your sense of Christian responsibility. I want to talk to you today about the theological importance, the importance to a godly life, of dogs.

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Birth Pangs

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at Putnam United Presbyterian Church November 17, 2024

Text: Mark 13:1–27

Well, we can say this much: another presidential election is over. Roughly half of the country is pumped and feeling bullish about the future, while the other half is collecting canned foods and researching bomb shelters online. But we can say this pretty confidently: no matter who you were rooting for, this election cycle was brutal to endure. I made the comment last month during the concerns and joys that the only thing that seems to unite Americans these days is the nausea we all were feeling about the election.

A cloud of doom settled in over this election and the perception many of us have about the health of our country and state of the world, and this pessimism really was a nonpartisan experience. We saw it in Republican TV ads that depicted the US as being overrun by marauders from the south and cast into a new Great Depression by an economy allegedly driven into the ground. Democrats matched those doom-and-gloom pictures of the country with their own predictions of the end of democracy and Western civilization if they lost. And since the Democrats lost (in spectacular fashion), the anguish has only intensified with Democratic leaders and voters wearing black, crying openly, packing go bags, and either doomscrolling addictively or retreating from social media as if it were the comforting days of the 1990s.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you’ve been paying attention to politics, our reality has felt ominous to you at some point recently. Today’s Gospel reading fits right into our current collective mood, because there is a lot of doom in this story, too.

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The Importance of Being Father

jamescalvindavis

Truth be told, after thirteen years of fatherhood, I have to admit that I still am not used to thinking about myself in the context of Father’s Day. Father’s Day doesn’t feel like it’s about me, at least not intuitively. On Father’s Day I reflect on my own father. I remember the very good moments with my dad, moments that in some ways get more poignant as he and I get older and the relationship roles reverse just a bit. I think about the ways in which I am shaped by being the son of an Appalachian coal miner, influences that go down to my core, accidental on his part, but molding who I am as a person and as a professional. These days I spend a little of Father’s Day telling myself I’ll be more faithful this year in calling home and visiting. On Father’s Day, I think like a son. It continues to catch me a bit by surprise that this day could also be about me.

And yet, being a father is who I am, and with every passing year it becomes as formative to my character as being a son. My sense of self and my responsibilities in this life are defined in large part from the duties of parenthood; my calendar certainly reflects that I have two jobs now. I think as a father now, too. In the classroom, I approach many of the ethical issues I teach with different eyes. In the airport, my heart beats faster when I hear a small voice crying. I know more about circumstances we broadly refer to as “special needs” than I ever did before. I am more invested and interested in a place and culture on the other side of the world (where my sons were born) than I ever was before. I watch baseball and NASCAR now; as it turns out, there are sports other than football played in this country! I am father now.

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