Search Results

This week’s pericope begins and ends with love. What is interesting about how Jesus begins is the connection to the apocryphal work the Wisdom of Solomon. Many Protestant Christians do not read Wisdom, but I (...)

Every year liturgical churches around the world unite in spirit to prepare their hearts through a season of Lent to receive the Risen Lord on Easter. From the moment the ashen cross is placed as (...)

On one level the temptation is a story about Jesus similar to stories of other religious leaders in antiquity, who faced struggles early in their lives and prevailed. At Jesus’ immersion God confirmed him as (...)

Local church division is a recurring theme in the Corinthian correspondence. The initial report of quarrels sent from Chloe’s house church makes evident that believers were splitting into factions along the lines of their favorite (...)

Too often John the Baptist is treated like a problem to solve. Preachers feel pressure to apologize for his strangeness, his divisiveness, and his threats. Longstanding anti-Jewish tropes and ahistorical caricatures about so-called works-righteousness fuel (...)

The Greek meaning of “epiphany” means to reveal or uncover.1 Yet every season, Jesus is “uncovered” or “revealed” twice.  Luke “reveals” the identity of the Baby in the songs of the angels, so we celebrated (...)

Many of us adorn our homes and churches with beloved Nativity sets during Advent and Christmas. They’ve become an integral part of our celebration of the season. But there’s also an unintended consequence of these (...)

I have argued in the previous commentary that the Pastoral Epistles weave together clear, practical, instructional injunctions addressed to specific members of the communities and general kerygmatic theological comments. Here we have another example: in (...)

One of the reasons I love preaching from Isaiah is the depth of meanings found therein. Isaiah’s words were a cause of introspection and hope during the prophet’s life in 8th century BCE, during Jesus’ (...)

This is a tough passage to unravel. Like most of the letter to Colossae, it is theologically rich (and dense). It layers multiple ideas and themes one on top of the other to create a (...)