The Ten Days of Awe, the High Holy Days of Judaism, began last week with the two-day Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashonah, days of rejoicing and remembrance of ancient sacrifices and averted calamities. Poet David Lehman writes: For I started the (first) day by eating an apple dipped in honey, as ritual required. . . .For I asked Our Father, Our King, to save us for his sake if not for ours, for the sake of his abundant mercies, for... Read more

Who do you think you are? Who said you could do that? Hey, what’s the big idea? Think you’re a wise guy, huh? You need to show a picture ID. You’re too big for your britches. You need taking down a peg. We question authority all the time.  Sometimes viciously – see political ads. Sometimes violently – look at street brawls and drive-by shootings  Sometimes civilly – the Scots raised the question of secession, campaigned for and against it, and... Read more

If the government declared that the leaves of the trees were money, wrote Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark, so there would be enough for everybody, money would be worthless.  It has worth only if there is not enough for everybody.  It has worth only because the government declares that it has worth and because people trust the government in that one particular although, in every other particular, they wouldn’t trust the government around the corner. Jesus’ story about... Read more

Ingrained.  Deep in the bone. Things that I have done one hundred and forty times are like that – they are ingrained.  They have become habitual. We all have some of those habits, those ingrained things we do that are so deep they are way beyond conscious decision making, and they are not prompted responses to feelings – though there is a thread of thought in them, and a persistently vague feeling that the absence of doing them is not... Read more

The moral life, says American Catholic poet Marie Howe, is lived out in what we say as much as what we do — and so words have a power to save us. And because words have power that can save us, words can also condemn us. Power tends to corrupt, as Lord Acton observed. Jesus, according to Matthew, said as much:  Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on... Read more

When Jesus of Nazareth came riding into Jerusalem on his mule, a small group of radicals, illiterates, and ne’er-do-wells hailed him as the Messiah, the Christ.  Everybody else suggested that you had to draw the line somewhere and advised a public and unpleasant execution so nobody would fail to get the point. – Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking. When he told his friends he was going to go to Jerusalem, they knew it was going to be horrid.  Peter begged... Read more

For all the Hallelujah choruses, creeds, basilicas and general hoopla that celebrate the name, Messiah, isn’t it, now and forever, the question in our hearts and cultures:  Who is Jesus? In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples, Who do people say I am?  And they offer a number of names:  Some say John, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.  And then Jesus asks, Who do you say I am?  And Peter blurts:  the Messiah!  And... Read more

 “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this to us.” Then he said, “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft,... Read more

Jesus, Savior, pilot me, over life’s tempestuous sea . . .  My grandmother loved this hymn, playing it over and over on the parlor piano in her house. In Matthew’s version of the story, the disciples, caught in a storm at sea, fear for their lives.  And then Jesus comes walking toward them, over the water, and the sea is calmed.  Peter, excited as he often is, jumps out of the boat and begins walking toward Jesus – he, too,... Read more

In a dream, the Prophet Ezekiel ate a Torah scroll, to show how sweet as honey was the word of God (3: 1-3) Perhaps also in a dream, the prophet Elisha saw his teacher Elijah lifted into heaven in a chariot , and he begged him, leave me a double portion of your spirit, and Elijah threw him his mantle (his spiritual power) that day, because his work was not done.  Every year, in the Seder dream of fulfilment, a... Read more