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These 6 verses are preceded and followed by the literary context in which the Johannine author has placed them. This context is 8:12-30 and 8:31-59. We disregard 8:1-11 for being most probably a late gloss. (...)

Today’s reading follows Paul’s heated condemnation of evangelists who had been insisting that Gentile believers in Christ must be circumcised and become Jews, in order to be brought into right relationship with God. Paul’s argument (...)

With the story of John the Baptist’s birth, Luke reveals how the God of Israel is a God who acts in both expected and unexpected ways. Luke portrays the expected, yet unexpected, nature of God’s (...)

“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge, Your people shall be my people, and your god (...)

The inclusion of Genesis 50:15–21 among the gospel reading from Matthew 18-21-35 and the epistle to the Romans (14:1–12) is intended to link it thematically to the imperative to forgive those who sin against us (...)

Strange, isn’t it, that the lectionary has jumped to this text over some dramatic episodes like the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13) and the healing of a demon-possessed boy (17:14-21), then over an intriguing teaching of a (...)

The gospel now recalls some teachings that the disciples will find hard to swallow. Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” elicits Jesus’ blessing. Now a stern warning from (...)

This three-week series, with readings primarily from the New Testament, serves as a sort of throwback.1 By “throwback” I mean that creeds are typically the result of a concerted effort to “codify” a kind of (...)

This psalm lection contains a magnificent constellation of biblical terms, portraying them with a striking intimacy that catches modern readers off guard: “righteousness and peace will kiss each other” (verse 10)?¹ This psalm lection contains (...)

First-century writers were not thinking in terms that would occupy theologians of the third and fourth centuries, so it would be a mistake simply to read those later debates and credal formulations back into the (...)