The Bible seems to present no end of Trumpian mirrors for our delectation and discussion. As I have offered these various mirrors to our 45th president, I recognize that some of my readers may see these articles as little more than sour grapes at an election lost or as angry pique toward a man who in my wildest nightmares I could never imagine might become my president. Perhaps they are a combination of those two factors among others. I will... Read more

  (Lectionary for April 2, 2017) Little wonder that the early Christian church jumped all over this text as they searched for claims in the Hebrew Bible that they felt matched their own emerging beliefs. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus was a central claim for the early communities, as any cursory look at the letters of Paul makes clear. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain and our preaching is void,” he thundered, or at... Read more

A gold star in Bible trivia if you even know who Lamech is, and another star if you can tell us where he is to be found in the Hebrew Bible. The answer to the first is that Lamech was son of Mathushael, who himself was son of Mehujael, and so on, as Genesis 4:17-19 reveals to us. None of this of course has anything to do with a vibrant faith, but it can surely fill your Bible with those coveted... Read more

(Lectionary for March 26, 2017) It is often a guessing game to attempt to discover what lead the collectors of the Common Lectionary to choose the texts that make up the three-year list. Of course, at times it is quite obvious: Easter Sunday looks at one of the gospel accounts of the resurrection while Christmas Day invariably suggests the birth stories from one of the gospels, which leads to a likely mishmash of the three Synoptic ones, based squarely on the... Read more

In our last installment of this series on the ways the Bible mirrors the outrageous behaviors of the 45th president of the USA, Donald Trump, I focused on the constant attempts that Trump makes to deflect attention away from his own questionable actions (e.g. shady connections with Putin and the Russians) toward various sideshows that he either completely fabricates out of thin air (e.g. last week’s absurd claim that President Obama wiretapped his phones both prior to and after his... Read more

 (Lectionary for March 19, 2017) The Lenten journey often wants us to head to the wilderness, whether that be in some remote spot in the desert or among the canyons of the big city; after all, wildernesses come in all shapes and sizes, and they are to be found among the rocks and animals of the wild well as places within our innermost selves. This peculiar text regularly appears in Lent, I assume because it is set in a wilderness, and it... Read more

No! I do not mean by this title that I think Donald Trump is in fact the snake of the Garden of Eden, though I have heard more than a few of my liberal friends make such a comparison. By that hyperbolic and nasty connection, my friends, less than familiar with the actual biblical story of the famous garden, assume, I suppose, that Trump is the living manifestation of the devil himself, replete with horns and tail and cape, or... Read more

(Lectionary for March 12, 2017) This year’s Lenten journey began with our commitment to convert ourselves to a new view of the environment of which we are only a part. Last week, I urged all of us to become “servants” and “protectors” of our earth, and to do that by recognizing the normative power of the metaphors of Gen. 2:15. This call has become all the more imperative with the appalling announcement yesterday, by the new administrator of the Environmental... Read more

Today’s installment in my Bible as mirror series, where I compare biblical characters to the 45th president of the USA, Donald Trump, takes us to the book of 1 Kings. It has to do with a very significant transfer of power nearly 3000 years ago, a transfer that had fatal consequences for the people called Israel. Though Solomon is traditionally remembered as being a man of exceptional wisdom, I fear when it came to running a country, he was nothing less... Read more

(Lectionary for March 5, 2017) It is common in the first Sunday in Lent to turn to Genesis. I assume this has become the lectionary practice, since we are beginning once again our Lenten journeys on this day, and the book of Genesis is the curtain raiser of the biblical saga. And because Lent has often been characterized by solemn introspection (though in last week’s post I tried to offer another way of seeing Lent), Genesis is apparently viewed as... Read more