Month: June 2025

When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem [Luke 9:51, RSV]. In the Gospel lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday, Luke 9:51-62 [the Third Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C], the Gospel writer doesn’t indicate that Jesus turned his path toward Jerusalem or that, after careful consideration, he decided to go there. Luke says that Jesus “set his face.” A Semitic idiom, it’s also a vivid image. Not a glance. Not a nod. Instead, a gaze that hardens into direction, like steel cooling into a blade. In Luke’s Gospel, it’s the moment when everything shifts. From this point on,…

Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian [Greek: paidagōgós] until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian [Galatians 3:23-26]. There are seasons in the life of faith when it feels as though we live under strict supervision. The rules are clear, the boundaries set. Right and wrong are carefully marked, and our spiritual world is fenced by expectations. These seasons can feel confining. But they can also be safe. There…

by Thomas A. Robinson. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. Philip said it first—quietly, as if wonder required no force. “Come and see” [John 1:46]. To Nathanael beneath the fig tree, to the Greeks with careful questions, to all who asked more than they dared believe. From the city where stone once unsuccessfully sealed a tomb, he walked east, past borders and maps, until the hills of Phrygia received his last breath. No gospel records the words he spoke there. What remains is this: the hill remembers. The stones lean inward. A silence deeper than ruin lingers. I stood there— feet on earth that had cradled his bones, morning sun rising…

A meditation written near Ephesus By Thomas A. Robinson; copyright 2025. All rights reserved. I’m writing from Kusadasi (7 hours ahead of my friends on the East Coast), on the Aegean coast of Turkey—just a few miles from ancient Ephesus. Tomorrow, I’ll join fellow pilgrims in walking the ruins of that early Christian city, and we’ll celebrate Eucharist not far from where Paul once preached and Timothy once served. It’s also here, according to some early traditions, that Onesimus—the runaway slave mentioned in Paul’s letter to Philemon—became a bishop. Whether that tradition is historical or a kind of holy imagining, it stirs something deep. What if the man once called…