The Gospel in a Nutshell

Last updated on: March 11, 2020 at 6:15 pm By Vance Morgan

Sports fans old enough to remember the 70s and 80s will recall that a regular occurrence at baseball or football games either in person or on television was, when the camera panned the stands, to see a person—often wearing a colorful fright wig—holding up a large homemade poster board sign with a cryptic reference that made sense only for initiates: John 3:16. I often imagined the confusion that many might have felt at this ubiquitous, almost subliminal communication, especially in a... Read more

Do You Love Your Life?

Last updated on: March 9, 2020 at 12:40 pm By Vance Morgan

Although I read all the time–I once told my ophthalmologist that that I read for a living–I seldom read any book that I’m not teaching out of more than once. So, it is unusual that I am currently reading Stephanie Saldana’s The Bread of Angels for the third time in the past few years. It is a book that was very meaningful to Jeanne and me a few years ago, so meaningful that she gave our copy of it to a friend... Read more

God Is Not Choosing the Next President–We Are

Last updated on: March 9, 2020 at 11:13 am By Vance Morgan

The regular season of Providence Friars basketball ended last Saturday; after a remarkable end of season push (six wins in a row and counting), the Friars play in the Big East tournament this week, then will wait anxiously next Sunday to find out were they will be playing in the NCAA tournament. All of the teams in the Big East have a religious affiliation, most of them Catholic. There is a Dominican friar in a white robe lurking around the... Read more

The time, it is a-changin’

Last updated on: March 6, 2020 at 9:36 am By Vance Morgan

For many of us, Daylight Saving Time begins tomorrow at 2:00 am. That’s “spring forward,” people! I’m going to go out on a limb and embrace the controversy that I know is to come: I like time changes. I like changing to standard time in the late fall, with nightfall earlier each day as we inch toward the winter solstice. I like that. I like falling back (and the extra hour of sleep once a year) and also, for entirely different reasons,... Read more

When I’m Sixty-Four

Last updated on: February 28, 2023 at 1:30 pm By Vance Morgan

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” Paul McCartney, The Beatles Today is my sixty-fourth birthday! I ask my family, friends, followers, and readers to indulge me as I meander through a few matters on the way to trying to identify some things that I think I’ve learned in almost three-and-a-half decades. A few weeks ago, in my “Apocalypse” colloquium, my teaching partner and I gave the students an assignment called the “Civilization Archive”:... Read more

God Is Doing the Best that God Can Do

Last updated on: March 2, 2020 at 9:06 pm By Vance Morgan

Frank Tupper, an important Baptist theologian who argued that God is in control of very little in our world, died a few days ago. According to an online eulogy and summary of his life, the thesis for Tupper’s writing, theology, and life was that “In every specific historical context with its possibilities and limitations, God always does the most God can do.” As a response to the problem of evil, to pervasive questions about why a good and omnipotent God... Read more

Jesus I Know . . . But Who are You?

Last updated on: February 29, 2020 at 9:32 pm By Vance Morgan

Today is the First Sunday of Lent; the gospel traditionally is a version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The devil . . . temptation . . . the problem of evil . . . these are all matters I’ve been concerned, even obsessed, with since I was very young. While on sabbatical a decade ago at the Collegeville Institute, a fellow resident scholar and friend died unexpectedly. Conrad was a lovely, gentle man whom I had only known for... Read more

What I Learned When I Visited Cuba

Last updated on: February 27, 2020 at 7:13 am By Vance Morgan

Cuba and Fidel Castro are in the news, as Bernie Sanders seeks to explain why he thinks that it was a good thing that one of the results of the Cuban revolution was that Cuban citizens became among the most literate citizens in the world. Seventeen years ago, I was part of a group of a dozen or so academics who visited Cuba for a week on a fact-finding trip related to their health care system. I returned from this... Read more

A Lenten Reflection: The Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

Last updated on: February 25, 2020 at 12:38 pm By Vance Morgan

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself. Michel de Montaigne As part of the liturgical year, I freely confess that Lent is my least favorite season. Over the past several years I have regularly posted something like “Why Lent is a Bad Idea” on this blog around Ash Wednesday. I have struggled not so much with the season, but rather with what Lent seems to represent for many people. It often is little... Read more

A Lesson from Transfiguration Sunday: Stop, Look, and Listen–but don’t touch

Last updated on: February 21, 2020 at 12:24 pm By Vance Morgan

Today is the last Sunday before Lent, a Sunday which, in the liturgical calendar, is always Transfiguration Sunday. Included in all three of the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ transfiguration is a strange story multiple layers of possible meaning. Jesus is worn out by the crowds and takes his best buddies, Peter, James, and John, with him to the top of a mountain for a break. While there, he is transfigured with Elijah and Moses, looking like a great laundry detergent ad. Matthew’... Read more