Month: September 2020

What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? [Isaiah 5:4]. I can remember the moment as clearly as if it had occurred just a few minutes ago. In point of fact, almost 56 years have passed since that sunny, clear afternoon and what amounted to an eighth grade study hall, during which I read the final sentence in Shirley Jackson’s masterful short story, “The Lottery,” and fell in love with narratives that have unexpected endings: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. If…

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you this authority?" [Matthew 21:23] Along with me, some pastor friends of mine–two elders in the United Methodist Church, one a teaching elder/pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)–have sometimes joked among ourselves, "How would Jesus have fared if he had come before a Conference or Presbytery Board of Ordained Ministry?" I can hear some of the Board's conversation now. "I don't know that I can support this man, Jesus. He caused his parents all sorts…

That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity [Jonah 4:2b]. As I have related from time to time, during the 50s and early 60s, one of the mothers who played an important role in the biblical education of the elementary school-aged children at Olney Presbyterian Church (southern Gaston County, NC), was a frustrated thespian. She could, and did, turn most of the Old Testament stories into little dramas, with parts set out for every boy and girl. To her credit, she didn’t play…

“I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” [Matthew 18:32b-33]. I’d wager that at some point in your schooling, you had a classmate who thought that the best way to demonstrate his or her “smarts” to the teacher was not so much to have an effective answer ready for questions related to the assigned reading, but rather to jump ahead a few chapters before class, then raise his or her hand and, when acknowledged by the teacher, ask an intelligent-sounding question (from the upcoming reading) and then quickly supply the answer.…

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other commands there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor [Romans 13:9-10a, NIV]. About a dozen years ago, during a long period of time in which I taught the “Sola Scriptura” adult Sunday school class at Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church, we had an occasion to discuss one of the best-known of Jesus’ parables — that of the “Good Samaritan” — found only in Luke’s Gospel [Luke 10:25-37]. We took time to discuss an important contextual…