By Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder In a recent town hall meeting a former Google executive asked President Obama to raise his taxes. The attendee stated that he had done quite well at the company and has chosen not to work any more. Through his increased taxes, this individual wants the government to continue investing in Pell Grants, infrastructure and job training. This call for the rich to pay more taxes is similar to the one Warren Buffet heralds when declaring he... Read more
By Eric D. Barreto How many of the Ten Commandments can you name? If you are like most Americans, the number is far below the full ten. A 2007 survey reported that most Americans could rattle off the ingredients of a Big Mac more readily than the Ten Commandments. (more…) Read more
By Greg Carey Ezekiel speaks compellingly to the current situation in the United States. But is the prophet’s message true? (more…) Read more
By Matthew L. Skinner Read more
By Barbara Kay Lundblad What is the text for this Sunday, September 11? The minister may read a text from the Bible but many people will be hearing other texts that aren’t in the book: the reading of names, the melancholy drone of bagpipes, a final goodbye left on an answering machine. Some of us may return to scripture verses read ten years ago – Lamentations’ poignant picture of the lonely city that once was full of people or the... Read more
By Mark G. Vitalis Hoffman Matthew 18:15-20is an insider’s text for outsiders. From Matthew’s perspective, Jesus is both warning and assuring those inside the young Christian church. It is a church, however, whose members stand outside the main streams of both religious and civil practice. (more…) Read more
By Greg Carey Matthew 16:21-28 confronts us with the gap between Jesus’ gruesome fate and our own modest discipleship. Jesus’ verbs say it all. Deny the self, take up the cross, follow Christ. Moreover, only in losing one’s life – the primary meaning of apollymi is to destroy – one may save it. And Jesus apparently means it. Judgment he says, involves “repaying” people according to what they have done. At this moment we are hearing Matthew’s distinctive voice: salvation comes... Read more
By Eric D. Barreto Had fear prevailed, we would not know the name “Moses” today. Had Pharaoh triumphed, the story of God’s liberation of God’s enslaved people could not be told. Had a number of women not acted out of compassion and courage, the extermination of a people would have been sharply felt by them but probably forgotten by history. (more…) Read more
By Barbara Kay Lundblad This story in Matthew 15 is very troubling. A Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus to heal her daughter. By the end of the story, her daughter has been healed — but between the crying and the healing, Jesus says some terrible things. He’s arrogant, racist and just plain mean. We may believe that Jesus was “truly human,” but we don’t want him to be too human. (more…) Read more
By Matthew L. Skinner In Matthew’s Gospel, the story of Jesus walking on water morphs into a story of Peter walking on, then sinking into, the same water. It begins as a statement about Jesus’ authority; for Jesus’ contemporaries had learned from scripture that such mastery over the waters is God’s accomplishment. When Peter tells Jesus to call him, too, onto the lake, the story transitions into an illustration of what it looks like when people express faith in Jesus.... Read more
On Scripture - The Bible
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