A slave, then a dead man, next a prostitute, and now a madman – Luke piles one story on top of another showing how Jesus widens the circle of the people of God to include those who have been seen as contaminated and corrupting – the unclean.  Two thousand years later, the mentally ill are the group we still fear, and shun. Luke has placed this mad young man in an unclean town, a town on the far side of... Read more

The woman on the floor, in John Beraud’s painting, brings the world’s oldest profession into the picture.  She is kissing Jesus’ feet, and rubbing them with oil, using her hair to caress and anoint him.  Her tears are part of the anointing, and her love. This long-remembered moment of intimacy takes place in the house of Simon the Pharisee, a man of rigorous self-control, whose righteousness is disciplined and habitual.  And in his own mind, because of this, he is closer... Read more

Jesus intervenes in death three times, according to the memories of his friends.  All four gospels tell the story of the restoration of Rabbi Jairus’ daughter.  Only John tells the tale of the raising of Lazarus from his grave.  And only Luke tells the story assigned for this week, of Jesus raising the son of a widow from the pall on which he is being carried to his grave. In each tale Jesus jars the sensibilities of his witnesses, who are... Read more

It’s a small story, and briefly told in Luke’s gospel:  Some elders among the Jewish community came to Jesus on behalf of a Roman centurion, whose slave, whom he valued, lay close to death.  Would Jesus heal the slave, they asked, and added, even though the owner isn’t one of us, he’s a good man, he built our synagogue.   And Jesus is on his way to the centurion’s home when he receives another message:  don’t come to my house, I... Read more

Genesis 1, the beautiful hymn to Imago Dei, the One God, opens the Bible by casting away an uproar of deities without naming any of them, describing instead the panoply of God’s Creation in days and nights.  This Imago Dei is the great gift to which Judaism and Christianity belong.  The One God:  not pulling the sun across the sky in a chariot, nor lording the creatures of the dark into a nether world, but raising all,  in days that... Read more

Religion and terror –  inseparable in Jesus’ time, explosive in our own.  Their combustible fusion led to his death and has been a lit fuse —  in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians, in the American south between white Christians and black Christians, in India between Hindus and Moslems, in the Balkans between Christians and Moslems, and in sporadic acts of violence in recent years in European and American cities. In the sensationalism of hate, the... Read more

The epiphanies of Easter draw to their end, the forty days of unexpected sightings, memorable conversations, sharing bread and cooked fish in giddy joy, all the things that eased the pain of Jesus’ death, according to the Easter tales.  This all ends with the Ascension, ten days before Pentecost, Jesus lofting away on clouds, or with angels, depending on which tale you read. It’s a happy story, at least on the surface.   John has Jesus give a loving, presaging speech... Read more

On April first, in the spirit of foolishness and in the longing for spring, women from a local retirement community dressed the trees in the center of town with whimsical woolen wrappings they had knitted.  It was quite a feat, and is  a sight to behold. Last week the songs of Ella Fitzgerald rippled over the radio, in honor of her birthday.  Born into harsh poverty in then-legally segregated America, given no education to speak of, she became the First Lady of Song... Read more

Now the cycle of Easter stories circles back upon itself.  The circle does not return to Easter dawn, the circle is wider than that.  The circle reaches round and back to the Last Supper, to the moment when Jesus’ agony begins. John tells the story with interlacing love and pain.  Jesus’ ultimate instruction to his disciples, the final intimate step in the arts of love in which he has been leading them, is footwashing.  He wordlessly prepares himself to wash their... Read more

It was the Festival of Dedication, John writes.  Now it is called Hanukah, an eight day winter celebration in Judaism which Jesus observed, held in memory of the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The festival’s history began in 333 BCE, when Alexander the Great conquered Syria, Egypt and Babylonia and promoted a lenient form of Hellenistic culture, encouraging the study of the language, custom and dress of the Greeks.  A legend says that Alexander asked for his statue... Read more