Ding, ding, ding! Round one goes to Jesus of Nazareth. That’s how we’re tempted to see exchanges between Jesus and the religious champions of his day – as theological boxing matches. In today’s gospel passage, the chief priests and elders throw out a cunning challenge, and Jesus sidesteps the attack and lands a one-two, question-dilemma…

The scene in today’s reading from Matthew becomes more and more familiar. People are waiting for work. Waiting to be hired. Waiting to earn a day’s wage – which in those days was just enough to feed one’s family. The issue, then, is one of daily bread. Just like manna in the Exodus narrative. Just…

You have to be taught to hate. Little boys do not stitch together their own Klansman robes. Young girls do not look longingly at vests in shop windows with visions of being a suicide bomber. Yes, children will readily turn sticks into swords and guns for their play. But they do not name someone as…

Today’s gospel lesson is part of Jesus’ teaching about our life together in community, how it is that we are to live and love within the Christian community, especially when things go wrong. And because we are talking about human beings living in community, we can be fairly sure that things will go wrong. Our…

It is a hard job being religious. Perhaps we feel this the more when we compare our lives with those of the saints. Of course we have our excuses. The world was less complicated in their days. People had time to pray seven times a day, like the psalmist. We move from that excuse to…

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church. It is Peter’s day – the day he is renamed by Jesus. No longer Simon, but Peter. Which in the New Testament Greek makes for a kind of pun – for the word for “rock” is petra, while Peter is Petros. Petros is petra –…

Have you ever felt as desperate as the Caananite woman in today’s gospel? Emotions seem to explode from us when we’re desperate. We’ve all seen pictures on the television of women and men wailing with grief over their children slaughtered in a bomb attack in the Middle East. They often collapse in unbearable pain over…

If you ever decide to write a book about the gospels, here’s an idea for you. You might want to tackle the central role of the Sea of Galilee in the narrative of Jesus’ ministry. A great freshwater lake or inland sea about a third the size of Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border, it…

[NOTE TO READER: The Greek word “esplahnisthē” in the fifth paragraph is pronounced “Es-plah-NEES-thee.”] Jesus’ cousin, the one who went before him to open the way, is dead. Both John and Jesus had started their brief ministries as courageous prophets, proclaiming God’s justice, calling people to repentance, inviting them to find their way to God….