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Six years ago I returned from a life-changing visit to Kisumu, Kenya (described in this column from 2016). I had been invited by the Rev. Tom Ochuka, then a pastor (now a bishop) in the (...)

We Christians are an interesting, perhaps odd, group of people. We follow a savior who was born in a stable rather than a palace. A teacher who ate with tax collectors and sinners, who touched (...)

Jesus has been heading to Jerusalem since Luke 9:51, and in Luke 13:31-35 the Pharisees urge him to get there even quicker. They claim that Herod desires (thelō) to kill him (verse 31). However, Herod (...)

When Moses comes down from meeting with God on Mount Sinai, the text repeatedly notes that the skin of his face was shining (Exodus 34:29, 30, and 35). Rather than ask Moses what skin care (...)

During last February’s cold snap—the one in which millions of Texans lost electricity, natural gas, and water due to insufficiently weatherized utility systems, and at least 210 died—it was not the humans alone who needed (...)

Herod the Great was well-known in the ancient world for both his paranoia and his brutality. He had one of his wives and several of his sons murdered because he thought they were plotting against (...)

This lectionary reading introduces the season of Advent, when Christians await the birth of God’s messiah. In certain respects, the message is straightforward, since it quite obviously touches on the fulfillment of God’s promise to (...)

In the previous week’s Gospel, we heard the story of how John the Baptist comes to recognise who Jesus is as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). Now (...)

Luke 2:1–14, the Narrative Lectionary’s reading for Christmas Eve, presents the birth of a child to an unassuming couple in an unusual place. I suggested in the commentary for that text that Luke presents the (...)

The long career of environmental lawyer James Gustave Speth has taken him into governmental and intergovernmental leadership, academia, and many years of nonprofit environmental advocacy. His newest book, They Knew: The US Government’s Fifty-Year Role (...)