Second Sunday in Lent (Year 3, NL)

While recovering from a hiking accident, I posed the same theological question to multiple AI spiritual counselors.

Luke usually tones down the apocalyptic intensity we encounter in Matthew and Mark. Not here.

For theologian Judith Wolfe, imagination is a necessary part of how we know the Divine.

Who can resist the gardener’s advice to dig around deeply and replenish the soil?

We live with a clear-eyed hope that refuses to squint in the face of suffering.

I’m now a half-time “missional coach” to a six-church parish. I have many questions.

Having cats did not prepare our family for chickens.

It’s not possible to parent without experiencing risk, weakness, pain, and transformation.

I relate to the servant in Jesus' parable.

Jesus obliterates our internal ledgers and points us to repentance.

Is the fox cunning and clever, or is it wily and untrustworthy?

Amid pandemic and protest, will we turn to each other and live?

Do antisemitic appeals to the Bible always constitute an abuse of scripture? Would that it were so simple.

Jesus’ parables ought to alarm us, draw us short.

When we hear Jesus retort, “Tell that fox….,” we have to keep in mind the litany of intersections between Jesus, his followers, and the Herodian dynasty.

Are we the gardener? Or the fig tree?

Prophecy is a job not for the comfortable but for the afflicted.

When Jews, Christians, and Muslims gather to celebrate arts and culture, the dividing walls crumble.

One of the few fairnesses of life is the fact that each of us is given an equal 168 hours per week. That is where equality in so many ways ends. From that point on our privileges or lack thereof, and the resources they bring, define what we can do with that time.

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.