Matthew 25:31-46 We Americans are the richest people who have ever lived. I’m using statistics that are now almost a decade old (and I think these numbers are even higher), but 34% of our families own 2 TVs, and 40% own 3 or more. Our average family has 2 cars, while 18.7% of us have 3 or more, not to mention computers, VCRs, stereos, houses, etc. We live longer, with better medical treatment than ever before, we have unlimited... Read more
Matthew 25:14-30 Having paid close attention to the last 3 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, this parable strikes me in a different way today. Jesus is still talking in that long red-letter passage about when “these things shall be,” of which the disciples inquired. He’s still talking about what He is about to do: His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, which entail the coming of the New Covenant and the destruction of theTemple. Historically speaking, then, to whom is He speaking? It’s... Read more
Matthew 25:1-13 One of my favorite shows growing up was Batman. My favorite archvillain was King Tut (Julie Newmar’s Catwoman was a close 2nd). I think Victor Buono was a comic genius! Anyway, King Tut was in real life a mild-mannered Harvard professor of Egyptology, but when he got hit on the head, for example with a flower pot, he turned into King Tut. In one episode, he actually figures out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. He mumbles to... Read more
Matthew 24:42-51 Most of us adults don’t like being watched by our bosses. As children, we know that we’re supposed to be watched and that this watching is for our own good. We don’t always like it, but as children we know that it’s usually a good thing. But as adults, we often rebel at the idea of our boss watching over us. The question has to be asked “Why?” Why such rebellion against something the boss surely has a... Read more
Matthew 24:29-41 There was a thought-provoking book published a few years ago titled The Black Swan. It provides an insightful perspective into seemingly improbable events (i.e., a ‘black swan’) and our thinking that surrounds them. The author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that black swans underlie most everything within our world, but we usually fail to acknowledge the possibility of a black swan event until after it occurs. According to Taleb, most people focus only on things that we already know... Read more
Matthew 24:15-28 Something of supreme significance happened in the 1st century A.D. It would be easy to read it as we might any other event in history, that is, with a yawn and a reach for the remote control. Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 B.C., we read. At the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. the vastly outnumbered Greeks held back the Persians for three days in one of history’s most famous last stands. Interesting. Now let me get... Read more
Matthew 24:1-14 Sometimes, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. In this case, I feel compelled to say a word about Matthew 24 and its relationship to eschatology. In a word, I believe that in Matthew 24, Jesus is speaking not about the end of the world before His Second Coming but about events that would transpire in the 1st century. Let me offer a few points of evidence. First, when Jesus proclaims His woes upon... Read more
Matthew 23:24-39 Sometimes when I read the lesson for the day I feel like I’m in a biblical supermarket. The Lord offers me so many choices for what to talk about. Other times, it seems as if there’s only one thing to meditate on and for some reason it doesn’t compel my heart. I feel like that today. Here I am, walking down the aisles of the biblical supermarket, la dee da. What have we here? I pick up... Read more
Matthew 23:13-23 It would be easy to hammer the scribes and Pharisees again today. Really, they’ve made themselves such easy targets! And Jesus Himself spends one of the longest red-letter passages in the Bible wailing on them. So I’d have a good precedent and could claim to be following Jesus. But, you see, it’s too easy. The scribes and Pharisees are long dead, and so it would be too safe to simply beat up on them one more time from... Read more
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Monday of Sunday Next Before Advent – Revelation 1:1-8
Revelation 1:1-8 “The revelation of Jesus Christ.” That’s how St. John begins the last and most difficult book in the Bible. But too often, we approach St. John’s Revelation as if it were St. John’s Obfuscation. I can hear it now: “The first lesson is taken from the twenty-first chapter of The Obfuscation of St. John.” And all the people said, “Huh?!” I’ll say right at the beginning of my devotionals on John’s Revelation that I don’t believe that John... Read more