Third Sunday of Advent (Year 3, NL)

Simeon and Anna echo the worship material of ancient Israel.

Stanley Hauerwas’s The Peaceable Kingdom at 40

Evolving Faith’s Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu believe that a person’s deconstruction can’t just be for them.

What are we willing to sacrifice for racial justice?

The word of God is living and active; it meets us where we are.

As a homiletics professor, I would be inclined to give Jesus a passing grade, and not just because he is Jesus.

There’s a lot of urgency in that single word today.

How would Norman Rockwell have painted Jesus' homecoming to Nazareth?

Unabated cultural frivolity rules our churches, too.

Like John the Baptist, progressive Christians tend to define ourselves in the negative.

The pastor urged the congregation to sign an antigay petition. Clare Byarugaba knew she wasn't the only gay person there.

In this week’s Gospel reading, many people praise Jesus’ teaching—until he claims that he is the fulfillment of the scripture he reads. It is difficult for American Christians to grasp how shocking Jesus’ announcement is to a first-century synagogue.

There is much that we hope for, we who have cast our lot with Jesus of Nazareth. We hope for mercy, forgiveness, new life, eternal life. We hope for the promise of a new heart that—against  all odds!—beats in sync with our Maker, as promised by the prophet Ezekiel. We hope for the relief from pain, for relational wholeness, for freedom from the burden of crippling doubts and unmanageable burdens. We hope for heaven, whatever that might mean.

Chris Keith sets out to answer two questions. What lay at the heart of the conflict between Jesus and some of the religious authorities of his day? And how, if at all, did Jesus read Israel’s scriptures?

Our firstborn son came into the world seven years ago with red hair, blue eyes and keen perception. We discovered this early on.

We’d be out for a walk and Jonah would start pointing and saying, “Woof, woof, woof!” (i.e., “Mama, Dada, over there, a doggie!”). We wouldn’t see a dog anywhere, but he never lost his resolve. “Woof, woof, woof!” And sure enough, six, maybe seven blocks up, off in the distance we would see it: a big black poodle, or a cream-colored golden retriever. He was right every time. We were the ones without eyes to see.

He was not the young man they had known before. They were sizing him up, as people in small towns will do, when he stood up in the synagogue to read from the prophet Isaiah. He read a fantastic and otherworldly passage, plainly not about Nazareth, but about some other place. And then he startled them all: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Was he talking about them? Or himself? And what did he mean by proclaiming right there, in his hometown, “the acceptable year of the Lord”?

He was not the young man they had known before. They were sizing him up, as people in small towns will do, when he stood up in the synagogue to read from the prophet Isaiah. He read a fantastic and otherworldly passage, plainly not about Nazareth, but about some other place. And then he startled them all: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Was he talking about them? Or himself? And what did he mean by proclaiming right there, in his hometown, “the acceptable year of the Lord”?

Some 50 years ago, Merton warned us about what can happen when “all words have become alike.”

The opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry left no doubt: a commitment to Jesus involves a commitment to build communities of peace and justice. But first comes the calling.