I smuggle wheelbarrows

• “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” — Luke 14:13-14

• I’ve been reading Entertainment Tonight ever since David Neff was the editor there.

(William Lindsey has a good roundup of reactions and repercussions following the recent CT editorial.)

• James McGrath points us to this Messy Inspirations post, “Genealogies Contradict in ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke.’” It’s a nice, wonkily bib-studies discussion of the function of non-literal genealogies in the first-century world, which is fine. But it’s disappointingly Ruthless.

Because I think Ruth is the key figure in all of the various biblical genealogies we’re given of Jesus and David. Ruth the Moabite is included, and therefore the writer is taking sides in an argument that had been going on for centuries already by the time the Gospels were being composed. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke may differ in the details of their genealogies and in dozens of other details as well, but they were both emphatically on the same side of that argument. They were Team Ruth, fiercely opposed to Team Ezra. They were Team Book of Jonah, fiercely opposed to Team Jonah. Heck, the sequel to Luke — the book of Acts — is basically one extended polemic against Team Ezra/Team Jonah and everything they imagined to be true about God.

This is an ancient argument, but it never ended. A not-so-varied variation of it has shaped every American election of my lifetime.

See earlier:

• “This generation has far too many ‘Ezras’ already, thanks”
• “Biblical Teaching On Divorce: Start With Ezra”

• Tanya Chen writes for Buzzfeed’s “Please Like Me” feature “about how influencers are battling for your attention.” I appreciate Chen’s tone and approach to this horrifying, horribly sad story of tragedy and shut-eye: “The Evangelical Parents of a Young Girl Who Died Are Using Social Media to Ask for Her Resurrection.”

As Chen says, “I feel terribly sorry for Olive’s parents in the wake of this horrible tragedy. We can’t judge a person for what they do in times of unimaginable grief.”

But one also has to ask about the GoFundMe this church set up to raise $100,000 in support of this resurrection. When this cruel false promise is at last yanked away from this grief-stricken family, will their church return the $43,000 raised so far?

• Candace E.C. O’Brien watched Clint Eastwood’s movie Richard Jewell and had the same reaction I did (see here): “Where Was Anti-Choice Terrorist Eric Rudolph?”

The FBI screwed the pooch by misunderstanding the motive for the crime and therefore chasing after the wrong suspect, enabling the actual criminal to murder more people and destroy more lives for years to come. You can’t correct the injustice of that by making a movie that ignores the real criminal and the real motive for his killing spree.

• TCM is so good at these: