Month: October 2021

But Ruth said, “…. Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her [Ruth 1:16b-18]. For the next two Sundays, the Revised Common Lectionary appoints two segments of text from the short book of Ruth as the OT readings. As you know, the book of Ruth is just four…

  Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take courage; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus [Mark 10:49-50]. For years now, I’ve been captivated by the story of blind Bartimaeus. It’s the Gospel reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday [Mark 10:46-52, the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B]. Luke offers us a similar story [Luke 18:35-43], albeit with fewer details. For example, in the Lukan passage, Bartimaeus is unnamed. I’ve sometimes pictured what might have gone through Bartimaeus’ mind as Jesus approached him on that day so…

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all [Isaiah 53:6]. Barrels of ink have been spilled in efforts to provide a specific identity for the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 53:4-12 [the OT reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday, the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B]. Today, most Christians see the passage clearly as a foreshadowing of Christ. We read these verses, see that the Servant was “despised and rejected, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief” [loose translation of Isaiah 53:3], recall the beautiful, familiar words from…

“Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone” [Mark 10:17b-18]. A thousand years ago, when I was in law school—actually, it’s been a mere 45 years since I graduated—we had a particularly frightening law professor. Dr. Robert E. Lee—no joke—was a 1928 graduate of Wake Forest Law. In my first year, the Autumn of 1973, almost 50 years had passed since Dr. Lee had been a law student at Wake. He still maintained the highest GPA of anyone ever to matriculate there. He quickly reminded us that as long as he was…