Archives

July 2023

July 18, 2023
When a problematic passage only appears in one gospel, it gives me pause. We don’t...
July 13, 2023
These examples of community are deeply committed to democracy and also have strong social commitments...
July 12, 2023
Every member of the community held a mutual commitment, sharing what they could to ensure...
July 11, 2023
Of all the temptations that could have been mentioned, the obstruction and deceitfulness of wealth...
July 07, 2023
By ignoring nuance they are setting themselves up to always be destined to exhibit “deeds”...
July 06, 2023
The more one reads the Bible, the more one encounters passages in the scriptures that...
July 05, 2023
It’s for us to discern whether what we think is wisdom has produced deeds that...

June 2023

June 29, 2023
And rather than developing stalwart, privatized systems of self-sufficiency, this points toward toward building community...
June 29, 2023
We live in a culture of independence, isolation, and self-sufficiency that ignores the reality that...
June 29, 2023
It begins with a knock at the door. On the stoop stand two itinerant beggars...
June 22, 2023
"What does this passage have to say about how sustainable our system today is, both...
June 21, 2023
This language about Gehenna in its original Jewish context, rather than in a modern Christian...
June 20, 2023
Let’s try to hear this language about Gehenna in its original Jewish context rather than...
June 15, 2023
Whatever we call it, this was about a world that is compassionate, safe, just home...
June 14, 2023
The harvest was associated with justice, a vision of a world where no one had...
June 13, 2023
A harvest metaphor makes a lot more sense given that context. In the Hebrew scriptures, the...
June 08, 2023
To Christians today who want to use political power to make it much more dangerous...
June 07, 2023
In this story, women’s reproductive ability is not their choice but governed by men to...
June 06, 2023
What is broken and needs healing in a person that causes them to want to...
June 01, 2023
What are some of these commands that Matthew’s Jesus tells us to obey? The lion...

May 2023

May 31, 2023
Change is a two way street, an exchange. Those we meet, share with, and listen...
May 30, 2023
We must be honest about how this passage has been coopted by colonialism that has...
May 25, 2023
One way to redeem this passage is to connect it to John 20. To inhale...
May 24, 2023
We need a holistic interpretation where people’s spiritual wellbeing is connected to their material economic,...
May 23, 2023
There is a tendency here to devalue the material, concrete, physical realities in which people...
May 18, 2023
A unity that walks arm and arm with justice. A unity that’s big enough to...
May 17, 2023
I resonate much more with working to make our concrete world, here and now, a...
May 16, 2023
Our reading this week is John’s version of Jesus’ farewell prayer. This passage deeply influenced...
May 11, 2023
Considering the ethics and values within the Jesus story, loving Jesus means actually loving the...
May 10, 2023
For the original audiences of the synoptics, “advocate” would have called to mind a deep...
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