Imagine standing before the Temple—the pride of Jerusalem, the symbol of God’s presence, the center of worship, the beating heart of a people’s identity. It was dazzling. The marble gleamed in the sun. The air shimmered with incense and song. Pilgrims came from every corner of the empire to see it and say, “Surely, God […]
In today’s Gospel reading, the Sadducees come to Jesus with a trick question. They don’t believe in the resurrection, and they want to make the idea sound ridiculous. So, they pose a scenario drawn from the law of levirate marriage: a woman is married to seven brothers, one after another, each dying childless. “In the […]
I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green: they were all of them saints of God […]
The parable of the self-righteous Pharisee and the repentant tax collector. At face value this is how we would tend to title and interpret the parable from our Gospel reading for this morning. Luke has told this parable in a way that encourages us to identify with the tax collector who demonstrates the positive Christian […]
In the past few years, I’ve found myself frequently turning to the books of Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament scholar and orthodox Jewish woman. Perhaps because she doesn’t carry the baggage of 2000 years of Christian tradition on her shoulders, I find that her scholarship often gives me new eyes with which to see stories […]
Luke is a Gospel full of parables. The parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son are perhaps the two best known of all his parables. And all of the parables in the Gospel of Luke share a common element. No matter the plot, all of the parables have a twist. […]
Coming back from a four-month sabbatical to this Gospel passage from Luke for this morning is like trying to run a 5K after not running at all for four months. It was more than a little painful and I discovered that some of my sermon-writing muscles had grown a little weak. But sometimes you just […]
There he was a man who could not walk surrounded by other people with various impairments, lying by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years. That is a really long time. Every day, he watched others enter the water, water that was believed to have healing power when stirred by an angel. But […]
I recently finished reading a book by a sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark, titled The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. In this book, Stark seeks to answer the question: “How did a tiny obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of western […]
“So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me.” John 10:24-25 Our Gospel reading for […]