Isaiah
275 results found.
Third Sunday in Lent: Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9
We don’t talk about idolatry much anymore, despite the caution against it in everything from the Ten Commandments to the New Testament epistles. This is ironic, because idolatry flourishes in our culture.
Third Sunday in Lent: Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9
We don’t talk about idolatry much anymore, despite the caution against it in everything from the Ten Commandments to the New Testament epistles. This is ironic, because idolatry flourishes in our culture.
Generation names
As anthropologists have shown us, cohesive communities usually have narratives, traditions, and symbols that have shaped their collective psyches and have powerfully bound them together. These traditional practices make up their thought world, and when a person is displaced from that world, it makes less sense to carry on the practices.
My father grew up in a clan society in pre-Korean War North Korea. His grandfather was head of the Shin clan.
By Joyce Shin
January 10, Baptism of the Lord: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
When our collective symbols and stories no longer make sense in our reality, we question who we are. After exile and liberation, the ancient Israelites were so devastated that images of overwhelming waters and fire speak to them.
by Joyce Shin
January 3, Epiphany Sunday: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6
If all it took was a star to compel a person to Bethlehem, the Magi would arrive to see a multitude.
Let some mortal flesh keep silence
My words feel small. Like I’m trying to beat back the ocean with a stick. I could command the waves to stop, but the sea will keep pounding the sand. Recent world events have generated a lot of fodder for preachers and writers, and yet I have nothing to say.
December 13, Third Sunday of Advent: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
The tension between the joy of the first three readings and the judgment of the Baptizer’s proclamation is theologically instructive. It presses us to hold the two together.
Naming the shadows: My visit to Lbeck
The Totentatz window was created soon after the Shoah but with no reference to the city's murdered Jews. Two of them were my grandparents.
Post-traumatic texts
David Carr rereads the familiar materials of the Bible in conversation with trauma theory. This opens the way for a fresh and suggestive interpretation.
Post-traumatic texts
David Carr rereads the familiar materials of the Bible in conversation with trauma theory. This opens the way for a fresh and suggestive interpretation.
April 3, 2015, Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; John 18:1-19:42
Aristotle writes that we would never go to the theater to see terrible things happen to a good man through no fault of his. Yet here we gather, aching for a good man’s sorrows and turning to him to make sense of our own.
by David Keck
April 3, 2015, Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; John 18:1-19:42
Aristotle writes that we would never go to the theater to see terrible things happen to a good man through no fault of his. Yet here we gather, aching for a good man’s sorrows and turning to him to make sense of our own.
by David Keck
Sunday, January 11, 2015: Mark 1:4-11
I eschew the danger of the river, but I know that it is where God leads me.
by Diane Roth
On the wrong side of Vespers
Last week we drove 350 miles to Smith College, where our daughter was singing with the glee club at Christmas Vespers. Each year at a pair of services, campus and community enter liminal space by hearing sacred music from student choral and orchestral groups, pondering poetry and biblical readings by students and faculty, and singing carols together.
This year it also became a setting to turn attention to other matters. As a Facebook event page put it, “You can’t sing carols if you can’t breathe.”
By Martha Spong
On the wrong side of Vespers
Last week we drove 350 miles to Smith College, where our daughter was singing with the glee club at Christmas Vespers. Each year at a pair of services, campus and community enter liminal space by hearing sacred music from student choral and orchestral groups, pondering poetry and biblical readings by students and faculty, and singing carols together.
This year it also became a setting to turn attention to other matters. As a Facebook event page put it, “You can’t sing carols if you can’t breathe.”
By Martha Spong
Sunday, November 30, 2014: Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
No one likes the thought of an angry God. It's hard enough to deal with an angry person.
The war against rest
"Remember the sabbath" is a costly commandment. Our culture’s assault on it extends far beyond Sunday.
The rhetoric of darkness
My mother died on the winter solstice shortly after her 50th birthday. So I have spent a lot of time thinking about darkness and the return of the light.
As I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark, I wondered if I had fallen prey to the dualistic paradigm she finds so troubling.
Sunday, October 19, 2014: Isaiah 45:1-7; Matthew 22:15-22
It often feels like a rhetorical game, this question of what belongs to God.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
The story of the golden calf is a parody of Israelite idolatry.