Churches spend a great deal of time asking how they will raise faithful children. Ours too. We ask what they need to learn, which stories they need to know, and what will help them carry faith into the rest of their lives. These are important questions. But in today’s passage, Jesus turns the idea of […]
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 […]
How far should we go in advocating for others? Should we dispute with God as we pray for them? Scripture Watch the Livestream
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 […]
This is quite the story to kick off our summer sermon series about “Disputing with God.” It’s at once familiar, at least in its outline and persistent cultural allusions, and at the same time like that movie we saw a long time ago, the whose general plot we can remember, but the details and side […]
Each day at Vacation Bible School, our children explored a different part of God’s Word and the good news given to them. Today we going to hear the same message at this past week’s VBS through five Scripture readings and five short reflections. Our theme this year was “Blastoff! God’s Big Universe.” All week long, […]
“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law….” How’s that for a “Happy Father’s Day!”? Several times this week, as we read this morning’s scriptures for our staff meeting devotions and when we gathered for the Wednesday Bible study, I’ve […]
Two weeks ago, I began the story of my first night on call as a student chaplain in the hospital. I had begged my way into the internship program because the program supervisor (in training herself) had deemed me too young and inexperienced at first. After working several daytime shifts in the first week on […]