Third Sunday of Advent (Year 4, NL)

We don’t talk about idolatry much anymore, despite the caution against it in everything from the Ten Commandments to the New Testament epistles. This is ironic, because idolatry flourishes in our culture.

The Totentatz window was created soon after the Shoah but with no reference to the city's murdered Jews. Two of them were my grandparents.

No one from the outside can fully grasp the inner workings of any marriage. Even those inside sometimes find themselves lonely and strangers.

Years ago, at a denominational gathering, I heard a visitor from the global South say the following about North American Christians:

They have so many things. They don’t need anything. Yet it seemed like the people were very thirsty, like they were in a desert and we were bringing them drops of water.

These words refuse to leave me.

Does the divine expression, the word, really work? Does it make a difference in our lives and in the world?

My yearning for the difference-making word drew me to James Crockett’s work in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Jesus chooses a circumstance of division, then instigates community.

In this week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says to the people,

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No... Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No.

No.

On September 9, when many of our members return from Labor Day vacations or summer travels, the gospel text from Mark and the sacrament of communion might be a powerful combination to welcome folks back to the gospel-centered community.

Whether she knows it or not, the Syrophoenician woman’s reference to the table is a persuasive image for her audience. The table stands at the center of Jesus’ ministry.

When you pray at LA's cathedral, you are part of humanity past, future and in the inglorious, unromanticized present.

Respectable women made their trips to the well in the morning, not at noon.

The prominent place of food and meals in the Bible may be surprising to us fast-food and take-out eaters. Back in biblical times, gathering and preparing food took time and occupied a significant part of Israel’s life. The danger of famine (due to natural calamities or crop failure) gave special importance to food. Water was drawn from a well or spring, not a faucet or commercial bottle. Bread was baked from scratch, and beans and lentils simmered for hours.

It is tempting to sit in judgment on others. Sometimes we do it in jest, as Mark Twain did when commenting on Adam. “Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” But sometimes the serpent eats us, and then we judge in earnest.

God will forgive my sins,” quipped Heinrich Heine on his deathbed. “It’s his job.” How different are the viewpoints of Isaiah, Paul and Luke! They note an ongoing theological tension between the assurance of God’s kindness and the call to immediate repentance. Yes, God is merciful, not punishing as we deserve, not automatically correlating our misdeeds with disasters. But there is no room for complacency: if we think we’re standing, we should watch that we do not fall.