There are passages of Scripture that comfort us, and there are passages that unsettle us. And sometimes, if we are willing to stay with them long enough, the unsettling passages may have more to teach us. Today’s Gospel is one of those passages. It begins with Jesus speaking about purity. The religious controversy of the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
In a nation and a world that is divided by so much right now I bet we could all agree that this little passage from Luke for this morning is really tough. So tough that most would choose to avoid it, but not the creators of our lectionary. They have made sure that we deal […]
In this week of the Presidential Inauguration, an interesting article from the Smithsonian Institute Magazine popped up in my feed entitled “A brief history of presidential inaugural speeches from George Washington to today” (Claire Jerry, published 1/14/2025). Being the history-minded person that I am I clicked on the link. The article cited the work of […]
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I […]