Month: October 2020

And the priests, bearers of the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant, stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, with all Israel crossing over on dry ground until the whole nation finished crossing the Jordan [Joshua 3:17, The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter (2018)]. Sometimes you need a sign. It isn’t so much that you want a sign; you may be so discouraged, so distraught, so afraid or bewildered, that you have given up on wanting for much of anything. Wants and needs are not the same thing, of course. While we’re often aware of our wants, we sometimes don’t fully appreciate our needs. That’s the…

“I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it” [Deuteronomy 34:4b]. While I’ll confess that Moses isn’t my favorite OT character–I was always more a fan of Yul Brynner than Charlton Heston–part of me has alway felt Moses was short-changed in not being allowed to set his feet upon the Promised Land. He had, after all, with brother Aaron’s sometimes able assistance, shepherded the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt, then on to Mt. Sinai, where he eventually delivered the Ten Commandments. He led them through countless struggles and had saved the people…

I wonder how Jesus would have handled the Senate Judiciary Committee. By that I mean to say we’ve seen, during the past three weeks of Gospel readings, that Jesus has been, in some respects, like the current nominee to the Supreme Court of our land, on a “hot seat” during the first two days of the last week of his life, enduring questions from a political party of sorts–the Pharisees–whose purpose is neither to elicit an intelligent response nor to gain some actual insight into our Lord’s theology, but rather to trip him up. The Pharisees, sometimes joined by others, are hoping they’ll catch Jesus in a serious gaffe. In…

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And he was speechless. [Matthew 22:11-12] Professor Emeritus Richard (“Rick”) Lischer told our preaching class many years ago that “with rare exception, when you read one of Jesus’ parables, if something within it doesn’t startle or offend you, you need to go back and read it again.” That is to say that Jesus’ parables aren’t sweet little stories containing gems of wisdom; they are most often glimpses into a wondrous kingdom in…