Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year 4, NL)

“If the gospel isn’t good news to the women in the passage, is it still good news?”

Every knee shall bow, even our knees.

Forgoing congregational singing as a spiritual discipline

Jesus in conversation with three women in the Gospels

Let me cut to the chase, brothers and sisters. Is this what you think living in Christ looks like?

And that conversation’s inevitable limits

What heals me may harm another.

A means of grace from the world of human services

“One second-century pagan critic of Christianity was willing to tolerate everything else about Christians if they would only worship the gods.”

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Matthew 26:14–27:66; Philippians 2:5–11

In her most recent book, Blessed Are the Consumers, Sallie McFague focuses on kenosis as the key element in shaping a Christian alternative to the pervasive religion of consumerism. McFague says that consumerism consists of those cultural patterns and practices by which people “find meaning and fulfillment through the consumption of goods and services.” We may rightly identify consumerism as a religion.

Like Willimon and Hauerwas, Donald MacKinnon began with Philippians 2.

Bart Ehrman's conclusions aren't novel to anyone familiar with historical scholarship on Christology. But those aren't the readers he has in mind.

If this Sunday's service seems crowded and discordant, there’s a historical reason for it: the lectionary readings are a combination of two different local liturgies.