Month: November 2020

How long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful [Psalm 80:4-5]. Patience has never been my long suit. Whether it was high school basketball, where Todd and I sat on the end of the bench with close friend, Robert, waiting for our team to fall sufficiently far behind so that those of us on the “second string” could do no real damage to the cause, whether it was Jane’s and my inability to wait two additional years for graduation–talking both sets of parents into consenting to…

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The king will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ [Matthew 25:37-40, NIV]. For the past six weeks or so, the folks in “my” Carolina Arbors Bible Study have pretty much followed the Gospel reading appointed for the…

"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away" [Matthew 25:15-15]. If one understands the context of a person's words, one is, generally speaking, pretty far down the road toward grasping their true meaning. That is one of the inherent problems with scriptural interpretation. The context is often exceedingly difficult to nail down. Not only were the words uttered in a foreign tongue, they were spoken two thousand or more years ago and sometimes not written down…

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour” [Matthew 25:13] And so, we wait. Oh, I bet you thought I was talking about the results of the national election. No, I’m actually referring to something much more important: the return of the Messiah. That return, the so-called Parousia, is more or less the central theme of Matthew’s Gospel from chapters 23 through 25, inclusive. That challenging swath of Scripture, sometimes referred to as “the Judgment Discourse,” is shoehorned into Matthew’s treatment of Holy Week. Having completed his jousting matches with the scribes and Pharisees during the early part of the week before he’d give up…