Author: trob

"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…

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…

What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? [Isaiah 5:4]. I can remember the moment as clearly as if it had occurred just a few minutes ago. In point of fact, almost 56 years have passed since that sunny, clear afternoon and what amounted to an eighth grade study hall, during which I read the final sentence in Shirley Jackson’s masterful short story, “The Lottery,” and fell in love with narratives that have unexpected endings: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. If…

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you this authority?" [Matthew 21:23] Along with me, some pastor friends of mine–two elders in the United Methodist Church, one a teaching elder/pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)–have sometimes joked among ourselves, "How would Jesus have fared if he had come before a Conference or Presbytery Board of Ordained Ministry?" I can hear some of the Board's conversation now. "I don't know that I can support this man, Jesus. He caused his parents all sorts…

That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity [Jonah 4:2b]. As I have related from time to time, during the 50s and early 60s, one of the mothers who played an important role in the biblical education of the elementary school-aged children at Olney Presbyterian Church (southern Gaston County, NC), was a frustrated thespian. She could, and did, turn most of the Old Testament stories into little dramas, with parts set out for every boy and girl. To her credit, she didn’t play…

“I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” [Matthew 18:32b-33]. I’d wager that at some point in your schooling, you had a classmate who thought that the best way to demonstrate his or her “smarts” to the teacher was not so much to have an effective answer ready for questions related to the assigned reading, but rather to jump ahead a few chapters before class, then raise his or her hand and, when acknowledged by the teacher, ask an intelligent-sounding question (from the upcoming reading) and then quickly supply the answer.…