I have spent my entire scholarly, preacherly, and pastoral life in love with the Hebrew Bible. I was enraptured by these ancient books in seminary, thanks to a superb teacher of the Hebrew language and his great affection for the texts in which that language was presented. Nearly everything we have in classical Hebrew is to be found in the pages of what we Christians long named the Old Testament, save a few cave inscriptions and a jar handle or... Read more

Today I thought it would be interesting to discuss a book that is not in the Protestant canon, though it has long been part of the Apocryphal literature that our Roman Catholic colleagues have used more freely that we Protestants have. This is not to say that even the Roman Catholics have not used this material somewhat sparingly, preferring to employ the 66 books far more than those books that are often placed either between the two familiar testaments (as... Read more

I have loved the plays and poems of William Shakespeare since I first took him seriously during my sophomore year of High School. Our teacher, in actuality a deeper lover of Jane Austen than the bard of Avon, assigned our class the task of presenting snippets of the plays that we performed for one another. My group chose “The Tempest,” and I chose (or was assigned?) the role of Caliban, that crabbed monster, both fish and man, who first lived... Read more

It has always been slightly amusing to me (I am easily amused, of course!) to watch the battles of the so-called “worship wars,” those struggles in the churches of the 21st century to capture congregations by means of the right music, the right liturgy, the right sorts of sermon presentations, from conversation to interaction to puppet-supported dramas to wild surges of preacherly track meets across the front of stages. My own church here in Los Angeles has a form of... Read more

On August 23rd in 1969, my wife, Diana, and I were married at the Stafford, KS Methodist Church (the church had yet to change its name to United Methodist, a union that had happened the year before). It was blazing hot, though a heavy rainstorm earlier in the day had cooled things a bit. We each had seven attendants; the rather tiny church with its tinier pulpit/lectern area strained to contain all of them. The organist of the Highland Park... Read more

The passage for today is so prescient for the time in which we are living that I could imagine it was written yesterday, hot off the press of some religious publishing house. Yet, we know that it was included as a part of the complex writings attributed to Jeremiah, and his followers, living in the mid to late 7th century BCE, well over 2600 years ago. It remains to me nearly incomprehensible just how relevant our quite ancient Bible continues... Read more

The passage for today has played an outsized role in the ongoing theology of the church. This is so because of vs.6 that is usually translated: “He (Abram) believed YHWH, and YHWH reckoned it to him as righteousness” (NRSV among others). I would translate as follows: “He trusted YHWH, and YHWH planned righteousness for him.” My reading assumes that the trust that Abram announces to YHWH, in the face of no certain evidence that YHWH will in fact make good... Read more

On occasion, in the course of these essays of mine, I let slip that I have two grandchildren, both girls, one, Saoirse, now 6, and the other Moxie, now 4. They are the children of my son, Darius, and his wife, Caroline. Caroline was born in Ireland, hence the name of their oldest child that in Irish means “freedom.” The name “Moxie” comes from my son, primarily, but the Irish influence appears again in her middle name, Finn. Unfortunately, Caroline... Read more

One must always be very careful not to over-generalize any statement about the Bible. When anyone begins a comment with the well-worn phrase, “the Bible says,” I have learned to duck! I know I am about to be hit between the eyes with a phrase designed to put me in my place, assign me to the deepest reaches of Hell, and win the argument for the speaker. This game is “Bible quotes beat all,” and may be played by any... Read more

Julia Rosen is a science reporter for the Los Angeles Times, with a PhD in Geology; she is based in Portland, OR. She wrote an important piece on Friday, July 12, 2019 concerning the vexed question of why so few persons actually discuss the issue of climate change, either with their friends or their families. The article is titled: “Why has climate change become a taboo subject?” with the subtitle: “Here are ways to end the silence and effect a... Read more