Like Lazarus rising from his silent tomb, Hillary Clinton has emerged from her silence, unbound and speaking out in defense of reporter April Ryan and, in general, all the values the Clinton campaign represented. This is the week when churches across the nation will read the story of the rising of Lazarus. And they will be missing the meaning of this event if they don’t tie it to Hillary and April Ryan. To refresh you, or if you missed it,... Read more

The raising of Lazarus is a very long story, a chapter length tale. And almost all of it is marked by silence. In this, the story mirrors our own experiences of the deaths of people we love. We weep, our hearts are broken. We pray No, no , no, no, and, irrationally yet predictably, we talk to the dead in our grief. We wonder if God, or the Spirit, or whatever is out there, cares. And God remains silent.  And... Read more

Iron Eyes Cody became famous for his “crying Indian” role in the “Keep America Beautiful” Public Service Announcement (PSA) in the early 1970s. It was an ecology commercial in which an Indian (Cody), canoes up the Hudson River, steps out onto the shore and then sheds a tear after some trash is thrown from a speeding car and ends up at his feet. The announcer declared: “People start pollution; people can stop it.” President Trump is old enough to remember... Read more

When the helicopter ambulance landed at Parliament, the injured were all ferried to hospitals in the British national health care system. Once there, the urgency and tension were all about their wounds, and not at all about whether they had insurance, what kind of coverage they had opted for, how large was their deductible, or were they indigent. The patients themselves, whether British or not, did not have to lie on gurneys phoning their insurance agents, or lamenting the fact... Read more

The story of the blind man who recognized Jesus in the blind town who couldn’t see anything good about the blind man, stands out, in the midst of the current Presidential barnstorming of Congress, to be blind to any problems caused by leaving 24 million people without health care, and instead to adore the prospect of saving 327 billion dollars, money saved by not paying for health care for those 24 million people. A blind town, a blind Congress, the... Read more

The President of the United States begins his days by sending out tweets that heap slander on someone. Former President Obama is in that headlining glare now, and has been for nearly two weeks. But really, Obama is on a long list, that includes Angela Merkel, the British Intelligence Agency, the CIA, all sixteen of his primary opponents, Senator McCain, Hillary Clinton, and most frequently CNN and the New York Times. Trump claims to be a devout Christian, but he... Read more

The CBO numbers for the shiny new Trump-Ryan Health Care Act are shocking. And immediate loss of 14,000,000 people from health care in the next year would be followed by an increase to 24,000,000 uninsured people by 2026. And the White House’s own calculations are even steeper – 26,000,000 will be uninsured by 2026, according to a document leaked to Politico. A detail is given by the CBO: that, for people aged 64, one year away from Medicare, their health... Read more

The Great Law of Judaism, the Law given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai, the Law written in stone as the Ten Commandments, holds out only one sexual sin: adultery. Jesus, in his lifetime, embraces some who have broken each of the Ten Commandments, as a sign of his redeeming work, as a sign of the power of forgiving love, and as a demonstration to us all of what it means to take up his work and follow him.... Read more

That remembered night, when Nicodemus came into the dirt poor streets of Jerusalem to hear the man named Jesus, could be a night right now. We tend to think of Nicodemus as a man of privilege, because Jesus was talking to the rag tag poor and Nicodemus stood out, in his good cloak with his good speech and his education. But that may truly unimportant. Because what Niceodemus was coming from, on his side of town, was a mess very... Read more

Lent has opened with a striking pair of examples of what to do, and what not to do, when you are caught in a kerfuffle. Kerfuffle is a British blended word (part Scots, part English) for a commotion or a fuss, especially involving conflicting views. And Lent is a Middle English word meaning to lengthen, or grow. Lent, the Oscars, and secret political meetings with the Russian ambassador, are all events involving kerfuffles of major proportions. And this week, the... Read more