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He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” [Matthew 15:24-27, NRSV]. I am reminded of a short discussion that Todd (for the several of you who don’t know him, Todd is my identical twin brother) and I had in our living room with a close friend when the three of us were about 10 or 11 years old.…

And they said to each other, “Here comes that dream-master! And so now, let us kill him and fling him into one of the pits and we can say, a vicious beast has devoured him, and we shall see what will come of his dreams” [Genesis 37: 19-20, The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter]. The wife looked at her husband, whose serial infidelity had surfaced once again. Too weary to continue the struggle—she’d fought for their union on several prior, similar occasions—she looked at him through the tears in her eyes and asked, “How did we get to this?” The man thought it odd that a police car had…

He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it [Genesis 28:11-12]. I had “the dream” again the other night. I’ve had it off and on for at least 40 years. I’m scheduled either to preach at an unfamiliar church or to give the keynote at a gathering of attorneys and insurance…

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, …. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear” [Matthew 13:3a, 8-9, New International Version]. Some five or six years ago, Jane and I had a crazy idea. We’d grow a few tomato plants and perhaps a few squash in an allocated portion of a community garden. A couple of green thumb friends agreed to help. Our plot was the size of a two-person grave site. By the end…

He replied, “The LORD, before whom I have walked faithfully, will send his angel with you and make your journey a success, so that you can get a wife for my son from my own clan and from my father’s family” [Genesis 24:40, New International Version]. Genesis 24 has 67 verses. That’s too many, of course, for a typical Old Testament lesson for Sunday worship. If we were to read the entire chapter, plus some of the other readings appointed for this week, we’d be late for brunch or lunch. And so, the Lectionary committee decided to hit the highlights of the extended Chapter 24— “Isaac gets a wife” —story…

And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you” [Genesis 22:1-2 (The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter). As I have allowed on a number of occasions over the past 35 years or so, there is a tendency for many of us to examine the familiar stories of both the Old and New Testaments and convince…

And the LORD appeared to him in the Terebinths [oaks] of Mamre when he was sitting by the tent flap in the heat of the day. And he raised his eyes and saw, and, look, three men were standing before him [Genesis 18:1-2a, The Hebrew Bible, translated by Robert Alter]. The OT lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday, Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7 [the Third Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year A], is one of my favorites. I wrote about it three years ago when we were in the early months of the you-know-what. Many of you know the Genesis story quite well. It has at least one, perhaps two, humorous turns. The…

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him [Matthew 9:9] Some years ago, a physician in a mid-sized Southern town, then in his late thirties, silently assessed his situation. The Rubicon lay before him. He and his partners had just finished their regular quarterly financial meeting. They had discussed the health of their practice; it was on solid ground. They’d discussed a few minor staffing issues. Most of their talk, however, had been about indigent care. It was far from their first discussion of the topic. Several in…

And God said, “Let us make a human in our image, by our likeness, to hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and the cattle and the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth [Genesis 1:26]. I vividly remember the first time I sought to teach Genesis. It was about 1983 or so, about three years before Jane and I took the leap required for me to enroll in Duke Divinity School for graduate study. I was leading and teaching a wonderfully active and unruly crowd of young adults in the Sunday School department at First UMC, Gastonia.…

No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy [Acts 2:16-18]. Growing up in a conservative congregation in what was then rural Gaston County (NC), I was taught that Pentecost was “the birthday” of the Church. By that we did not mean the birthday of “our” Olney…