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Treacherous days, treacherous texts. Treacherous days because the end is coming, as the texts insist. Treacherous texts because they will always lure some into trying to figure them out, to solve them, to determine the (...)

Handel Had It Right At least once a year, in the church where I grew up, our resident soprano soloist sang with great enthusiasm (and a bit too much tremolo) “I know that my Redeemer (...)

Although Psalm 321 is one of seven identified by the early church as penitential psalms (also Psalms 6, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143), it is actually a psalm of individual thanksgiving.2 The psalmist looks back (...)

How far may we push a parable? Should we regard parables as helpful fictions that open our imaginations to new possibilities, or should we approach them as condensed pedagogical vehicles designed to carry specific teachings? (...)

Like last week’s Old Testament lesson (Hosea 1:2-10), Hosea 11:1-11 offers striking testimony to the gracious, merciful, and steadfastly loving character of Israel’s God. While the message is much the same, the metaphor is different (...)

Hosea 1:2-10 introduces the metaphor that occupies chapters 1-2 and that resonates throughout the book — a bad marriage that is saved by the loving forgiveness of the faithful partner. The metaphor is full of (...)

As Dean Wormer said, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.”1 To put it another way (call it the Colossians way), “Estranged, hostile, and evil-deed-doing (21) is no way to go (...)

A Response to the First Reading In these difficult economic times, how much we want to hear Deuteronomy’s promise that God will make us abundantly prosperous in our undertakings and in the fruit of our (...)

If we follow the lectionary reading for this Sunday, we enter Psalm 22 right in the middle of an anguished scream. The psalmist has begun the psalm with a desolate cry of abandonment (“My God, (...)

In Galatians 3, Paul makes an intricate exegetical argument about the priority of God’s promise to Abraham and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and about the provisional function of the law in relation to God’s (...)