After Luke’s famous tale of Paul’s work in Athens, the center of ancient Greek learning, where Paul supposedly discusses with the Athenian philosophers the status of their “unknown god,” the apostle continues on his missionary journey to the port city of Corinth. Each time I have visited the city of Athens, I have of course gone to the Areopagus, Mars Hill, a spot marked for tourists by many signs in several languages telling us “Paul preached here.” I admit to... Read more

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s second volume of his work on the ministry of Jesus and the impact of that ministry on the Mediterranean world of the first century. As a window on the earliest missionary work of the emergent Christian church, the book is invaluable, however non-historical much of it certainly is. Luke’s Gospels, like the other three, are historical fictions, as I argued a few weeks ago in another essay, not primarily designed... Read more

I admit to a certain and undying fascination, a kind of guilty pleasure, when it comes to television evangelists. I find them all to be hucksters, mountebanks, shill artists of the first water, but I still gaze at them with a sort of witless awe. What is it about them that seizes my attention so thoroughly at times that I simply cannot avert my eyes? Is it akin to the grim human desire to slow down at the scene of... Read more

As we approach the holist days of Christianity, I have been led to think again about the texts on which these celebratory days are based. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter find their roots in specific biblical texts from the New Testament, themselves rooted in certain texts from the Hebrew Bible. As both pastor and teacher for more than 50 years, I have regularly this time of year turned to these texts that speak to what Christians most... Read more

In this extraordinary time of forced isolation, a time that promises to extend longer than any of us first hoped or desired, I have found special joy in the acts of reading and writing. I have long been a voracious reader, learning that wonderful and magical art at an early age, poking my growing nose into books ever larger as I grew, spending hours of fabulous time in libraries from Indiana to Arizona to Iowa to Texas to California. Some... Read more

I want to continue my use of the narrative lectionary for a time, since it helps me to see the story of the Bible more continuously, a reality that I think more of our congregations need to hear. Today’s text will closely match the Revised Common Lectionary, since each year after Easter that series of readings shifts to the book of the Acts to trace the growth of the early Christian communities as recorded in that second volume of Luke’s... Read more

As I have often revealed in these essays, I am a 50-year United Methodist clergyman, and, though I have long had a love-hate relationship with my denomination, especially with regard to its absurd and frightening rejection of full inclusion of GLBTQIA people, I have stayed on the Methodist bus, in the main, though with a 5-year detour among the Presbyterians. And because I am still a member of the UM clergy, I continue to receive any number of communications from... Read more

It is nearly certain now that we in Los Angeles will not be wending our way to any Easter services with our fellow parishioners. The governor of California yesterday asked, with considerable force, that all Californians, all 40 million of us, stay in our homes, venturing out only for absolutely vital reasons—grocery store runs, gas station fill ups, the occasional walk. There is no stated timeline concerning how long these restrictions may last, but since Easter is now only slightly... Read more

It appears more and more likely that my church, along with thousands of others this year will not be able to have Holy Week services with assembled parishioners. We will not see scenes like the one to the left. They will all need to be done at distance, using whatever technology those churches have available. My church’s first foray into this brave new world (at least I hope the world we are in is brave!) was checkered at best, with... Read more

The frenetic pace of Mark’s story, sprinkled liberally with the word “immediately,” slows down noticeably after Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on the donkey (Mark 11:1-11). The ensuing week, culminating in the empty tomb, consumes fully six chapters, nearly 40% of the tale. After Jesus’s tourist-like and silent observations of the temple compound, and after he leaves the city without any comment, he returns to Jerusalem and falls into confrontation with the religious authorities, as Mark has been predicting from the... Read more