Month: January 2026

Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel [Micah 6:1-2, a portion of the OT reading for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year A]. The prophet Micah describes what biblical scholars call a covenant lawsuit. YHWH summons Israel to court. The mountains and hills serve as jury—ancient witnesses who’ve seen everything, who were there when the covenant was made, who can testify to what has transpired. YHWH…

Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say, that there be no divisions among you, and that you be united with the same understanding and the same conviction [1 Corinthians 1:10 (Christian Standard Bible), a portion of the Epistle reading for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year A]. Paul wrote these words to a fractured church. The Corinthians were quarreling—forming parties around their favorite teachers and preachers. “I belong to Paul.” “I belong to Apollos.” “I belong to Cephas” [1:12]. Some even claimed, with what we can only imagine was a certain…

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. [Mark 8:22]. They said his name was Jesus.I heard it first as rumor,then as hope in voices I had trustedall my life. My brother took my elbow—the familiar grip I'd known since childhood—and said, "We're taking you to him." I did not ask if he could heal.By then I'd learned which questionshurt more than the darkness. But when we reached the edge of sound and crowd,different hands found mine.Not my brother's.Gentle, yes, but strange. "Come," he said,and led me away from everything I knew—the voices fading,the village sounds growing distant. I had lived…

This Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, and the Lectionary pairs the Gospel account of Jesus's baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) with Isaiah 42:1-9, one of the so-called Servant Songs. The pairing invites us to see Jesus in Isaiah’s servant, to see Jesus as God's chosen one, anointed with the Spirit, beloved and delighted in. The resonances are unmistakable, and for two millennia Christians have read these Isaiah passages as prophetic foreshadowing of Christ. In the original time frame of the text, however, the servant in Isaiah 42 almost certainly refers to Israel itself, not to some future messianic figure. Throughout Isaiah 40-55, “servant” is covenant language describing Israel’s unique…