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The passage begins with an insistent double imperative: Comfort! Comfort! The intimacy and compassion that are to infuse this comfort are underscored in the parallel command: Speak tenderly! (literally:”speak to the heart”). This poignant command (...)

The Times They Are A-Changin’ These days at the end of November are a season of changing times. The elections are over and newly elected officials prepare to take their positions. The Pentecost season comes (...)

Feasts, festivals, banquets, and wedding suppers abound in the Bible, and with good reason: meal fellowship represents community of the closest kind, especially perhaps in tribal cultures (then and now); and feasts give rise to (...)

In one of those sermons that bring the biblical world “down to earth,” the preacher talked about his life in Africa. He told us how the people of a village knew each other’s sheep the (...)

National tragedies threaten to render communities speechless. The collective grief can be overwhelming. In response, people often gather to sing songs, pray, light candles, and mourn together. Poetry and songs, in the context of ritual, (...)

This text is part of Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation, often identified with chapters 30-31, but probably including chapters 32-33. The larger scope of the Book is likely in view of the bracketing references to the (...)

The “kingship” of Christ is problematic for some of us today because of its male and hierarchical overtones. Christ the King Sunday first emerged, as I understand it, as an attempt to counter the outlandish (...)

This lection is quite short, a snippet from within a larger literary context. Such snippets, which are not infrequently encountered in the lectionary, can actually function to hinder if not hamper biblical literacy, something that (...)

Reading through this text brings to mind what Professor John Bright once wrote about these “confessions” of Jeremiah: Here, indeed, we learn what faith really is: not that smug faith which is untroubled by questions (...)

We ought to first note that the lectionary this week has skipped over I Peter 2.1-18. The very important passage in I Peter 2.4-10 will be next week’s text. The creators of the lectionary have (...)