A Thimbleful of Fire There’s a band out of Philly that I like, mewithoutYou [sic], that just wrapped up their farewell tour a couple years ago. Their musical style was a weird blend of lo-fi folk with punk that sometimes approaches screamo (which of course means they’re generally described as “rock”). But what’s stranger than that was their lyrics. The band’s core members and lyricists, Aaron and Michael Weiss, are brothers: their father was Jewish, and their mother had grown... Read more

“Before I Was So Strangely Interrupted” Now that the paschal cycle, and even its little train of post-Pentecostal solemnities, has wrapped up, we’re jumping back into Mark. Thanks to how early Easter was, we’re only in chapter three. Considering how long it’s been since I posted anything—and especially, anything up-to-liturgical-date; my last post was the end of a three-parter on Pentecost!—I’m going to try and be a little less elaborate with my next few posts, stick to the highlights. We’ll... Read more

Go to these links for Part I and Part II. A Caution These three posts deal with Judaism and its relation to Christianity quite a bit. I’ve done my best to research, and learnt some interesting things in doing so, but I am not an expert. I don’t even have a basic degree in this, like I do in Classics. I’m an amateur with Google and a copy of the Mishnah1; in other words, I’m an amateur. I’ve done my... Read more

Continuing from this introductory material. John 7:37-39 and 20:19-23, RSV-CE On the last day of the feast,b the great day,a Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink.c He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heartd shall flow rivers of living water.’”e Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receivef; for as yet the Spirit had not been given,g because... Read more

Set Your Mind on Things Above Belarusian ikon of Pentecost, c. 1500. Photo by Wikimedia user Khomielka, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license (source). Two distinct Gospels are prescribed for this solemnity: one for the vigil (from John 7, set during the festival of Sukkot) and one for the day proper (from John 20, immediately following the Resurrection). Since both are quite short, only totaling eight verses together, I’m doing both. However, to introduce them, I want to talk... Read more

The Second Love This passage is kind of an odd one. As C. S. Lewis pointed out* in The Four Loves, friendship is not a metaphor Scripture uses all that much for God’s love of his people. It is certainly rarely used when compared to the parent-child relation (principally father-child: e.g. in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Hosea, Romans, or Hebrews, but also mother-child: e.g. in Isaiah again, Luke, or Galatians) or the bridal analogy (e.g. in Psalms, Wisdom, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea again,... Read more

God the Vintner North American grapes (vitis labrusca) of the Concord variety. Vineyards and wine are common motifs in Scripture. This is natural; along with wheat and olives, grapes are one of the most important crops throughout the Mediterranean. Wine was extremely important in antiquity, and drunk from pretty young ages by our standards, because of something we virtually never reckon with: the difficulty of finding clean water and keeping it clean. Unless you lived by a mountain spring—which, no... Read more