“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens begins his novel, A Tale of Two Cities. That might be an appropriate title for the 24th-27th chapters of Isaiah. These chapters are the tale of two cities that aren’t necessarily named, but that represent the people with whom God made […]
The Brothers Grimm told a story about a merchant who had done good business at the fair; he had sold his wares, and filled his bag with gold and silver. Then he set out at once on his journey home, because he wanted to be in his own house to be ready for the next […]
Twenty-five years ago, the summer before my final year of seminary, I took part in travel study seminar to the Middle East led by biblical archaeologists. For three and a half weeks we traveled throughout Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Greece to see the land that some Christian scholars call “the fifth gospel” for […]
This week we are wrapping up a seven week series that has focused on Disputing with God. Drawing on texts that span from the time of Abraham through to the time of Jesus we have seen a few different kinds of conflict ranging from patriarchs begging God to spare God’s people when they have disappointed […]
While somehow I made it out of college without ever taking a course from the standard History Department, I took just about every church and Bible history class offered by the Religion Department. I could not get enough of those, and they have, to do this day, has a profound impact on my strategy for […]
The story about the prophet Jonah, if it is familiar, is probably familiar in broad strokes and mostly for the first half of the story. This is the part where God asks Jonah to do something Jonah isn’t too excited about doing – go to the people of Nineveh, a powerful, foreign city, and warn […]
In the Jewish texts called the Talmud there are some teachings of 2nd and 3rd century Common Era rabbis that talk about whether or not God prays, and if God prays, what does God pray. It sort of sounds like a spiritual version of the omnipotence paradox, “Can God create a stone so heavy that […]