I have to be quite honest. There is really very little about this parable that I like. “The weeping and gnashing of teeth” is one of my least favorite phrases in all of Scripture, and Matthew seems particularly fond of it. It appears six times in Matthew, once in Luke, and not at all in […]
There is a vineyard. Someone has planted it, put a fence around it, dug a winepress, built a watchtower, and entrusted it to tenants. And everything in Jesus’ parable turns on one simple fact: The vineyard does not belong to the tenants. They have been entrusted with it. They are responsible for it. They are […]
On Monday I was at my child’s soccer game. It was a close game. Tied for much of the time. In the end, my child’s team lost by one point. There were a lot of off-side calls. There were also, shall we say, some questionable calls by the referees. But this was a middle-school soccer […]
Peter comes to Jesus with what sounds like a practical question. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” It is such a human question. How many times? How long do I have to keep doing this? When have I done enough? Peter […]
Immediately after feeding a multitude with five loaves and two fish, Jesus makes the disciples get into a boat. “Make” is almost too gentle a word. The Greek verb suggests that Jesus compelled them, constrained them, practically forced them into the boat. This is not a pleasant invitation to take an evening cruise. Jesus puts […]
Today’s Gospel begins with Jesus trying to get away. Matthew tells us that Jesus withdrew by boat to a deserted place. He had just learned that John the Baptist had been murdered by Herod. John—Jesus’ cousin, teacher, baptizer, and fellow prophet—had been executed because he dared to speak truth to power. Jesus must have been […]
“The kingdom of heaven is like…” Again and again, Jesus begins with those words. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast hidden in flour. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure buried in a field. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine […]
Jesus is walking along when he sees a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth. That is how the story begins: with a man sitting. Matthew is not sitting in a neutral place. He is sitting at the tax booth, a place where money is taken, where empire reaches into ordinary households, where the […]
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 […]
Hello, let me introduce myself to you this morning. My name is Reuben. Your rector needed a little break this morning from preaching, so she asked if I would say a few words to you. I was born in the first century by your calendar. Probably around the same year your Jesus was born. When […]