I read just this morning an article in my local paper (yes, I still read an actual hardcopy newspaper, indicating my advanced age!) concerning a series of interchanges that the writer had been having with various of his readers on the subject of single payer health care proposals. This writer was in favor of such a system, but he received no small pushback against the possibility. The article was based primarily on one respondent who was having none of such... Read more

The crisis of the Gospel of Mark is looming closer, as this sequence of texts represents the second one that follows the pattern of suffering prediction, the disciples inability to understand what that means, and Jesus’s further teaching. But before that sequence begins, Mark offers to us another healing narrative that emphasizes one of Mark’s central concerns; healing is less the result of Jesus’s power but is rather more based on the trust of those who seek healing and wholeness.... Read more

The Narrative Lectionary includes many verses that precede this famous tale (8:27-9:1), but since this Sunday has long been named “Transfiguration Sunday,” it seems appropriate to focus our attention on the scene as Mark depicts it. Besides, no more spooky story may be found in the gospels, with its spookiness spiked with slapstick humor. What better combination can a preacher find? “Six days later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them off by themselves to a lofty mountain”... Read more

No more appropriate text could be chosen, given what we Americans have just witnessed in our political lives. President Trump was acquitted at his impeachment trial on a strict party line vote, save for the one Republican vote to convict on one of the two counts lodged against the president, by Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican candidate for president in 2012. At the annual Prayer Breakfast on the very next day, Arthur Brooks, a Harvard theologian, offered an... Read more

When Bible pooh-poohers enjoy nothing better than pointing out the numerous places in Holy Writ that are strange, bizarre, or downright repulsive, the tiny tale of Elisha and the bears is prominent among their lists. It was without any doubt a most peculiar story, devoid of traditional religious talk, and hardly number one, or even number 100, on any preacher’s nightstand for future homiletical reflection. I once challenged a class of advanced preachers to bring a sermon on 2 Kings... Read more

Mark 6 gives us the very finest soap opera in the New Testament! It is fully worthy of a stage play, and so it happened when Oscar Wilde wrote his scandalous account of the story of John the Baptiser’s grisly death in the play, “Salome,” written in French in 1893, translated into English in 1894. The play was quickly banned from the stage, due both to its salacious depiction of the heroine as well as its use of biblical characters,... Read more

I hope you looked carefully at the picture that accompanies this article. It is surely worth several close looks and is rife for comment. It appears to me to be a photo that is rich in political and religious idolatry. The idol is, of course, the current occupant of the White House, and the worshippers include any number of self-identified Christian evangelicals, led by the official White House spiritual advisor, Paula White, the head of a large Florida-based ministry organization... Read more

I have just finished a fascinating book by Aviya Kushner, called The Grammar of God. Kushner combines something of a memoir with her serious engagement with the Hebrew Bible in translation. Her story is quite unique. She was raised in a near all-Jewish enclave, Monsey, New York, a brief distance from Manhattan. Almost all the residents of the town are Chasidic Jews of various kinds; Kushner’s family was not Chasidic, but was a very serious practitioner of Orthodox Judaism. Her... Read more

Mark 5 presents to us two of the more famous healings in Mark’s narrative, the revival of Jairus’s dead daughter and the stanching of a woman’s unnatural 12-year flow of blood. In Mark’s particular style, the two healings are wrapped inside of one another, the former being delayed and heightened by the latter. At first, Jairus’s daughter is described “at the point of death,” but because Jesus spends time aiding the unfortunate bleeding woman, the daughter dies, and Jesus is... Read more

As I was closing my 33-year career as a member of the Perkins School of Theology faculty, there was an persistent conversation in many churches and their agencies centered around the topic of leadership. What the contemporary church lacked was leaders, we in the seminary were told, and therefore we were urged to take much more seriously our task in forming genuine leaders for the 21st century church. We responded to this summons by creating a Center for Religious Leadership... Read more