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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…

He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery” [Mark 10:11-12].   I don’t have the pincite handy, but St. Augustine once wrote, “If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it isn’t the Gospel that you believe, but rather yourself.” That, in a nutshell, is why both my personal devotional practice and these weekly meditations are built upon the Revised Common Lectionary’s appointed set of Scripture readings. In following the RCL’s three-year cycle, not only am I exposed to a broad swath of…

If the LORD had not been on our side—let Israel say—if the LORD had not been on our side … [Psalm 124:1-2a]. College football has changed substantially since my Wake Forest years (1969-76). You’d be correct, of course, if you replied, “What hasn’t?” As participants have grown bigger and faster, a whole new set of safety rules has come into play. At many schools—I won’t say which, although I’m thinking of one in South Carolina whose name begins with a “C” and ends with an “N,”—football is big business. During my WFU years, in business terms, Wake Forest football was bankrupt. Jokes circulated about our ineptitude. One year, at the…

Then he took a child and had him stand in front of them. He put his arms around him and said to them, “Whoever welcomes in my name one of these children, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not only me but also the one who sent me” [Mark 9:36-37, Good News Translation]. One of the more unusual episodes in the life of the first century Palestinian rabbi named Jesus is described in the Gospel reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday (Mark 9:30-37, the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B). Unfortunately, if one reads only the appointed verses, one misses some important contextual elements. For example, beginning in…

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom [Isaiah 35:1] This Sunday, the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), the Lectionary committee provides us with six readings. The OT reading is a curious one, Isaiah 35:4-7a, not so much because it lacks importance, but rather, due to its brevity. Why not include the entire chapter? It consists only of ten verses that form a cohesive poem. Not to travel too far down into the weeds, lest you think I’m an Isaiah expert—I’m not—but most modern Isaiah scholars see chapters 34 and 35 as a distinct, separate segment of the overall book. Here, we…

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone [Song of Solomon 2:10-11]. This Saturday (August 28), Jane and I celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. I remember—as if it was just last week—the moment I followed the Rev. Dr. Charles Shannon through the side door of the chapel at First UMC in Gastonia, at High Noon, on a partly cloudy, hot August Saturday. Ours was a small wedding, with about 100 friends and family present. A minute or two after my entrance (twin brother, Todd, was my best man), Jane and…

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God [Psalm 84:1-2]. This week—the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B—the Revised Common Lectionary favors us with two readings from the Psalter. We may opt for selected verses from the 34th. Alternatively, we may choose the entirety of the Psalm that is numbered 84. Over the past day or so, as I have thought and prayed about the pilgrimage of a close friend from his earthly existence to his place in the church triumphant, I have been…

Jesus said to them, Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink” [John 6:53-55, NIV]. “Come on, we’re leaving,” said the Hebrew man to his son and daughter. “He’s speaking blasphemy.” The son, who was in his mid-teens, protested, “Father, please. This man is different. You heard some of them say it earlier. ‘He teaches as one with authority.’ He…

Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth [2 Samuel 18:9b, NRSV]. Not that it makes any difference, but I’ve long been less than comfortable with the notion espoused in 1 Samuel 13:14, that David was “a man after Yahweh’s own heart.” By the way, the point is repeated in Acts 13:22. To be sure, the whole Goliath business shows David to be a faithful and courageous young man. But once David became king, he seems to have let his absolute power get to…