Happy Ascensiontide

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is a name you should know but probably don’t. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, she’s spent much of her career out of the American limelight. After serving at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in France, she moved to Japan and joined the staff at Toyko Lutheran Church. Now back in the U.S., she hosts a terrific podcast with her theologian father (listening to it will give you a full-blown theological education for free). Recently, she started a publishing house. Her newsletter, Theology & a Recipe, is a constant source of surprise and delight. And her books! — more on those in a minute...

What stood out immediately, when I first discovered Wilson’s writing almost twenty years ago, was the combination of sophisticated, adventurous thinking and vivid style. (Anyone acquainted with academic theological writing knows that you can’t take the latter for granted.) Wilson writes well. Consider this brief explanation from one of her newsletter entries for why Luther placed the Decalogue before the Creed in his Small Catechism:

What would you expect after staring long and hard into the unflattering mirror of the Ten Commandments? Condemnation, probably; or a moralistic pressure to get to work on yourself; or a pep talk that you can do it, complete with techniques to improve your odds; or, if you’re dealing with a realist, some combination of epicureanism and nihilism: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Instead of any of those, in the Catechism we miserable, helpless, self-excusing sinners receive nothing less than the holy and blessed triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now you see why Luther did his structural rearranging. What a surprise, what a shock, what good news!

That gives you a taste of what I find so artful and memorable in her writing.

Last week, in observance of Ascension Day, I published a review of her recent book Forty Facets of the Ascension. You can find that review here, at The Living Church’s Covenant blog.

A few other things:

• I had fun being a guest on Fr. David Johnston’s podcast, All Things Necessary. We talked about tips and tricks for Bible reading.

• A few weeks ago, I was at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA for a dialogue with my friend Davey Henreckson, “Is Friendship Worth the Risk?,” and was delighted to find this original piece by Salvador Dalí just casually hanging in a departmental hallway. It’s titled The Resurrection:

• Spring has just now arrived in full here in Holland, Michigan, so Karl and I have been enjoying a lot of afternoons on the front porch.