Heroes, in the biblical tradition, are not heroic. There’s just no way of getting around it.  Heroes are like shepherds who rescue a lost sheep.  You can carry on all you want about the unwisdom of chasing after lost lambs, the reckless leaving of the flock, and the large heartedness involved here, but, though classic heroes do rush in where angels fear to tread, you just can’t make the reckless shepherd into a figure of valor, noble action, battle beauty,... Read more

Scared sick. When life spirals out of control, I react by getting scared sick.  You know those feelings:  your heart pounds, your knees get shaky, and you think you may throw up.  And for me, the stress increases because I suddenly don’t know what to do, I want to do something and am useless at that moment.  So much is spinning around in my head, I can’t find words. And then the tears come. When my father died it was... Read more

Alone in the gospels, and in the whole of the Bible, Thomas is eternally remembered  for the wrong distinction.  He doubted, and that has become his moniker, down through the ages:  Doubting Thomas.  But his doubt is far from unique, in fact it is universal among the disciples.  All of them doubted,  every one hard pressed to recognize a reality different from the The End sign written over the death they had witnessed. The agony that took them from Jesus’... Read more

Easter is a moveable feast, according to the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer. The truth in these words goes far deeper than our usual notice, far beyond Easter eggs and breads, far beyond breaking the fast of sorrow with the words, Christ is risen and a bit of sacrament on the tongue.  The truth goes beyond something to be received, and is, in fact, something to become. In the several, and different, stories of Easter the four gospels... Read more

The Kingdom of God:  Jesus challenged the kingdoms of this world ceaselessly with his provocative What Ifs about our world.    Don’t like the powers that be?  What if  God were the ruler here?  Tired of news about murder, hopelessness, angry young men choosing to be terrorists? What if this were God’s kingdom?  Angry about your taxes?  What if God, not Caesar, were asking you to cough up – what would it cost you then? What if a man were lying,... Read more

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.  (John 12:32) Ominous, strange, magical, mysterious, mind-boggling is the older tale from which this idea comes.  It’s the tale of the bronze poisonous serpent, lifted up, that saved the people Israel in their long walk from Egypt to the Promised Land.  The tale, in the Book of Numbers, is one to which Jesus made reference as he walked the dangerous streets of Jerusalem. The... Read more

The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness more – John 3:19 The best known sentence in the gospels is just before these words:  For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that those who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.  It rolls easily off the tongues of many.  But NT theologian Marcus Borg* warns that, taken literally, this sentence turns Christianity into a religion of requirements and... Read more

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out . . . The unforgettable rage of Jesus is stunning and dramatic – his clenched fist holds high the whip of cords he has made, and he brings it down with stunning force, scattering the tables, the coins, the sheep, the cattle, the doves, frightening them all, and all the worshippers... Read more

What shall we call him? It’s been an invitation and a dilemma, down through the ages, what name to use for Jesus.  According to Mark  it was a dilemma for the disciples.  The buzz in the streets was various, and that worried them, for the names people used were different in their meanings.   Some called him a prophet, some said he was Elijah come back to life, some said he was a magical healer, some said he was the Messiah. ... Read more

The Turning Season.  Lent.   Solemnity falls upon the worship of the church, the extravagant lights of Epiphany are doused and the Alleluias are packed away. Yet the season begins with a twinkle, a gleam of hospitable pleasure in the readings this week, a titter if not a guffaw, and in it a rueful recognition of human stubbornness. These are stories of New Beginnings:  Noah, newly off the Ark; and Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, declaring Good News after John... Read more