Week 4 (Year 3, NL)

The Passover story is filled with competing ideas.

It’s hard to take it strictly on its own terms.

Overcoming the reluctance to be served requires something that looks and feels a lot like faith.

I am struck by how Christ’s desert experience relies on inner convictions resisting an external voice.

The Bible employs many merisms, in which two contrasting words stand in for a whole spectrum. “Male and female” is one of them.

As the women prepared the oil and spices, I think they must have told stories.

What do we do with our powerlessness?

If our faith cannot help us escape tribulations, then what should we do when we face them?

The lamb’s blood isn’t insurance against the wrath of God. It is a proclamation of fealty.

In Oberammergau, the keepers of a centuries-old tradition have made
big changes—including efforts to expunge antisemitic material.

“Each of the typical approaches has problems. The best solution would be to change the lectionary.”

If so, what did he mean?

How can these values be lived out in our traditions and in our assemblies?

We betray Jesus for far less than was offered to Judas.

A plague is being visited on all of us, but not evenly.

Hope smells like barbecue.

We recognize ourselves in those who accompany Jesus on that longest, hardest night.

God is the encounter we can't control.