Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year 1, NL)

During the pandemic, I went six months without touching another human being. I felt starved.

Praying in community is often more powerful than praying “in secret.”

How did my friend feel making a cross on my forehead, not knowing how long I’d be alive?

I don’t go to church anymore, but the faith I was pickled in still shapes me.

In the Mennonite tradition, we are all priests. But I still have a particular role to play.

“Anyone who thinks he knows the orthodox consensus can always be shown to be wrong,” says David Bentley Hart.

For Jesus, the inverse of scarcity isn’t abundance—it’s accumulation.

If so, what did he mean?

It’s easy to read this passage and assume it has nothing to do with us.

Some years the message of Ash Wednesday feels more tender than others.

We are invited to bring the rich resources of our senses and imaginations into the realm of faith.

My daughter wants to know. Even as a biblical scholar, I don’t have a good answer.

Mainline Christians have often distorted this passage from Matthew.

The distinctions between how we love God, neighbor, and self are not terribly thick.

What would Jesus say about it?

Briallen Hopper develops an alternative to the twin American creeds of self-reliance and marriage.