From the wilderness

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Myer Boulton's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

Whenever the Israelites' "wilderness wandering" comes up, it presents a golden opportunity--especially in the current U.S. political climate --to talk about immigration.

This kind of preaching and teaching "with the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other" (as Karl Barth is said to have put it) provides at least two major advantages. It's an opportunity to consider and engage a major political issue in light of the gospel. It's also an opportunity to consider and engage Christian life in light of a major biblical and theological motif: the idea that every disciple is fundamentally a pilgrim, a "stranger in a strange land."