Wrestling With The Word

Fifth Sunday in Lent I confess. I am fascinated by the discoveries of science that help us understand the development of life and the rich variety of life on earth. I also celebrate the knowledge that every life form is the way it is because it needs to be the way it is! Yet I […]

Fourth Sunday in Lent No wonder we mortals have difficulty grasping the word of God and applying the divine address to our lives here and now. God does not fit any of the categories by which we manage our lives and the affairs of the world. The Bible makes no qualms about the differences between […]

Third Sunday in Lent We can all understand, I think, that when people of faith experience hardships in their own lives and observe the sufferings of others, they often lose their faith in the God they worshiped. Such a response is quite common among people during grief and trauma. It is more difficult to understand […]

Second Sunday in Lent Many stories tell about a journey. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic is about Gilgamesh’s long journey to attain immortality. Homer’s The Odyssey relates the trials and tribulations of Odysseus as he travels home from the Trojan battlefield. J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings dramatically relates the journey of Frodo and his […]

First Sunday in Lent As I was listening over the past few weeks to some lectures on music, I became particularly interested when the teacher waxed eloquently about Pythagoras, the 6th century B.C, philosopher, mathematician, and most everything else. Pythagoras and his disciples (the Pythagoreans) developed a theory of numbers, often in terms of the […]

The Transfiguration of Our Lord The Sunday celebrating the Transfiguration of Our Lord has been set in a particularly strategic position. In one sense, the Sunday is also the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. In another sense, it is the transition to Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. Typical of the Epiphany season, the Transfiguration […]

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany The Epiphany season challenges us to discern the meaning of symbols in order to grasp the messages about the identity of Jesus. Removed by almost two thousand years, the biblical symbols that convey this powerful news are almost exclusively words. Word symbols relate meaning, however, only in particular contexts. For […]

Christmas Eve The birth of Jesus, and the way Luke and Matthew tell the birth stories, challenged much of the thinking of ancient times. The Christmas story, comforting and mysterious as it is, challenges us also—if we are willing to allow it. The challenge is primarily this. Thanks to worldwide influence of Plato’s philosophy, all […]

First Sunday of Advent, Year A Visionaries fascinate us. Many people stand in awe of the prophetic visions of Nostradamus to predict future events. More appropriately, we marvel at the visionary writings of Jules Verne who in the latter half of the 19th century wrote novels about traveling up into space and down to the […]

Christ the King Sunday As the season of Pentecost comes to an end, the entire church year concludes as well. How fitting that every church year ends with Christ the King Sunday. While the title for Jesus is not well attested in the New Testament, the announcement that the Reign of God has dawned in […]

Lectionary 33 Pentecost 25 I shudder when I think of how I contribute to our country’s consumer spending problem. We have become accustomed to spending on just about everything and to satisfying our needs for instant gratification. We know the problems for the economy that go with that habit we share. At times of personal […]

All Saints Sunday This particular Sunday offers many people comfort and hope, often while stimulating feelings of pain and sadness, even guilt and anger over the death of loved ones. Many churches continue the tradition of reading aloud the names of those who died since the last All Saints Sunday, and frankly, I find it […]

Reformation Sunday We celebrate the day because on this date, the Eve of All Saint’s Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. But what stands out for us, and what makes this day worth celebrating, is not the hammer and the nail in […]

Lectionary 30 (22 Pentecost) One of the last, if not indeed the final, message Martin Luther wrote in his deathbed was one of his most profound and succinct expressions of the gospel of Jesus Christ: “We are beggars, that is true.” As he lay dying, Luther anticipated what it would be like to stand before […]

Lectionary 29 (Pentecost 21) The title for this series of podcasts is “Wrestling with the Word.” Thanks to Google Alerts, I have learned that the expression occurs in many conversations regarding just about any issue in the world. In this series, however, the “word” is specifically God’s word. Here we wrestle with biblical texts as […]

Lectionary 28 (Pentecost 20) I can never understand why I periodically resent the teachings of the Bible. I suspect, though, that what bothers me is God’s generosity. You would think that God prefers people who are religiously connected, even properly religious people, like those of my own religion and denomination. But the Bible has a […]

Lectionary 27 Pentecost 19 There is a four-letter word that ruffles feathers, pumps up blood pressure, and causes arguments. It’s the word W-A-I-T. It seems like a complete waste of time to you and me and countless others. Yet God reiterates promises that are worth waiting for and calls us to make productive use of […]

Lectionary 26 (18 Pentecost) The summer vacations have come to their annual end, and so have the emails or phone calls from family and friends that so often include the words “Wish you were here!” On the one hand, the cliché makes me jealous of their experiences. On the other hand, precisely because they are […]

Lectionary 25 (17 Pentecost) I confess I become upset at some people’s lack of concern for others and at systems in the world that favor the rich and powerful. That anger presents quite a dilemma when I join others in expressing that God is the God of all people, that God loves everyone, and that […]

Lectionary 24 (16 Pentecost) When life takes its well-known detours that result in anguish of our souls, we sometimes stretch an accusing finger at God. Those unexpected turns seem at times to demonstrate that God is not faithful to promises—whether they were made or we imagine they were. We might find a biblical passage here […]