First Sunday in Lent (Year 3, NL)

“If John’s christological confessor is also the first person the risen Jesus appears to,” says biblical scholar Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, “that could make her a competitor to Peter’s authority.”

The world is overwhelming, and we need nourishment.

I wonder whether Martha could feel cared for by Jesus.

White Americans aren’t the Israelites; we’re the Egyptians. Maybe we should follow their lead.

My five-year-old parishioner spent the summer going door to door.

This is a story some of us need to hear in a new way.

We are trained to see ourselves as the hero.  

This is one of those stories that provokes howls of rage.

Can we behave ourselves into love?

“If to get a good message you need to make Judaism look bad, then you don’t have a good message.”

And are we practicing it?

Our political discourse features strong convictions about moral obligations—and widespread uncertainty about where they come from.

Until Christians can all share the Lord’s Supper, the rift continues. But there is no denying how massively the ground has shifted.

At first read, this Sunday's Colossians text landed for me with a bit of a thud between the rich narrative images of Genesis and Luke. But the text engages the themes of calling and vocation in important ways. 

God’s experience of hospitality—in the mysterious travelers and in the person of Jesus—inspires us to think beyond an Abraham-vs.-Sarah or Martha-vs.-Mary divide.

How do we respond to the issues that trouble people deeply? Jesus and the lawyer have a proper debate, but the lawyer continues to wrestle and cannot let go.