It was in the middle of a plain, or was it on a mountain? It started with what we call the Beatitudes, and it was a great speech. Or was it an editor’s gathering of things Jesus said on many separate occasions? The story appears in Matthew and Luke, both of whom relied on an earlier source now lost. Matthew is the one who gives us the “Sermon on the Mountain.” The mountain makes us think of Jesus as the... Read more
Looking at Jesus from a distance, an observer would notice one thing especially: he didn’t stay long in one place. If actions speak louder than words, one would want to understand what message Jesus’ wandering ways convey. This post traces a sort of journey in my thinking with help from John Dominic Crossan and his idea of the unbrokered kingdom. I tend to think about Jesus’ poverty and imagine that says something important about God. Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The... Read more
The idea that we are not our bodies, but the most important part of us is our souls, more or less loose from material things has a long history. Today it’s catching on again. That we are basically spiritual seems entirely too religious an idea for an age that’s gradually abandoning religion. On the other hand, it’s really a Gnostic, not a Christian idea. At least it’s not biblical. Still, Christians talk much about souls, and manage to confuse the... Read more
When scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman “caught in the very act of adultery,” Jesus wrote on the ground. What was he writing? People have used their imaginations to fill in this missing part of the story. I will do that too, but my imagination goes in a different direction from the usual, i.e., a list of the woman’s accusers’ sins. I would have Jesus witnessing for the woman instead of against her accusers. This is the 15th... Read more
Eating seems to have been a rather large part of Jesus’ ministry, and many criticized him for it. They compared him to John the Baptist, who seemed more authentically pious. Not that they were entirely consistent. John the Baptist was a bit too strange. They thought he had a devil. Like a bunch of children, they wouldn’t dance to a merry tune or mourn to a dirge, replied Jesus to the charge of being a glutton and drunkard. We’re in the series “Stories of Jesus and... Read more
Stories of Jesus, from Temptation to Cross From John, the last of the Gospel writers, we learn something about Jesus that the earlier, usually more historical, Gospels neglect. Jesus probably was a disciple of John the Baptist. During that time he carried on his own baptizing ministry. (John 3:22) Eventually Jesus parted ways with John the Baptist. This part of series “Stories of Jesus and the Character of God” looks at a few episodes of Jesus’ journey from Temptation to... Read more
Parkland shooting survivor on running for office: If that’s what it takes… Applause greeted David Hogg throughout his speech yesterday at the Westminster Townhall Forum in Minneapolis. The speech was broadcast live at noon on Minnesota Public Radio and again yesterday evening. Survivor of the mass murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Hogg is completing a “gap” year of political activism on gun issues before entering college. David Hogg and other Parkland students founded Never Again MSD and co-founded... Read more
Stories of Jesus, from Temptation to Cross Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels give us an overture of highly symbolic, largely non-historical stories of Jesus’ infancy and childhood. Then, ignoring the largest, so-called hidden, part of Jesus’ life, they pick up the story with an account of Jesus’ baptism by John. The baptism story sounds realistic, except for God’s voice coming out of the sky. Next both evangelists go into a story that sounds like plain fantasy. The spirit leads Jesus into... Read more
Biblical Faith, ‘About Real Historical Events’ The connection between blackface and Bible history may not seem obvious, but hold on. It was only when I realized how history remains alive in the present that I understood the truth about the blackface production that I was part of in the 1960’s. So this post is about blackface, but here’s Pope Benedict XVI’s quote about history: Benedict XVI: “For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does... Read more
In several posts I have presented a picture of angels and devils that seems far from the ones I learned about in my traditional Catholic upbringing. I don’t believe my going from there to where I am now means leaving the faith. I’m a bit tentative about where I am with respect to angels, after all. I will conclude with some statements of what that tentative position is. First, a more important question: Why get at all worked up about... Read more
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