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 […]

On the road to Emmaus, two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem with broken hearts and broken hopes. They are not serene. They are not triumphant. They are not performing religion. They are trying to make sense of disaster. And they speak the words so many of us know by heart: “We had hoped.” We […]

Two days before the festival of Epiphany and the end of the Christmas Season, the lights are still up, the music still familiar. And yet the Gospel appointed for today refuses to let us stay in that safe, sentimental place. Matthew gives us a Christmas story that is not cozy. It is dangerous. It is […]