10th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sitting and talking with a boy from Ethiopia, I received a radical dinner invitation.

What we know about Sarai is what she lacks. This week’s reading lacks her.

What would possess me to copy a chapter of the Bible by hand?

Why do we forgive him so much more easily than migrants today?

Is it man or humanity? Ark or chest?

Genesis 12:1–4a; John 3:1–17

The call of Abram is one of my favorite stories in the whole Bible. I have moved quite a lot, and the experience of packing up my life in England to move to the U.S. nearly three years ago is still fresh in my memory. The challenges that face Abram and his family are exciting, probably daunting, but certainly not without their cost. I love the way the call is vague about the destination: it seems that getting moving is more important than knowing the final details. 

I'm thinking about Psalm 33. It's a good one. It begins with music and ends with this reminder that princes and horses are not actually running the show. I know. I was surprised as well.

Some days it might feel that way, mind you, but it's not really the way things are. I always want question that kind of logic...ontology again. If Congress reinstates the draft then they are running the show. There is this thing called "power" and some people have more than others in some contexts. How does an ontological theo-philosophical argument slow down Congress or what have you?

The three readings for this Sunday have few obvious connections. But they do each point to forms of holiness: Genesis points to vocation, Romans points to faith, and John points to rebirth.

Faith, birth, vocation: our readings offer us profound, intimidating terms for thinking about what it means to be in relationship with God.

When Paul speaks of God “justifying” the “ungodly” Abraham when he believed God, Paul does not mean that Abraham was morally “wicked.”

An economic migrant—a desert nomad—leads his family toward a land of promise, believing he is following the will of his Creator. And so begins the great trek for new life, survival, redemption. He will find danger, so much danger that he plans to pass his wife off as his sister. It is a trek repeated today in the heat of the Sonoran desert, in boats from Africa running ashore in southern Europe, in the hulls of boats from Fujian province to the shores of Long Island.