First Sunday in Lent (Year 2, NL)

How do we wade through the vast morass of different teachings and beliefs about the God of the Bible?

In an uncertain, murky time, God gives the people a gift: ten laws.

“Anyone who thinks he knows the orthodox consensus can always be shown to be wrong,” says David Bentley Hart.

For Jesus, the inverse of scarcity isn’t abundance—it’s accumulation.

The word of God is living and active; it meets us where we are.

Her radical final words confounded me for years.

How one youth leader stopped being a chief counselor of fun and discovered something better.

Neither is religion.

We are worthy, loved, and enough. But so is everyone else.

What if Jesus is talking about humility rather than possessions?

The prayers of the people call us. When we answer, we invite the possibility that it is we who will be poor, hungry, sick, and in prison.

James reminds us of the duplicity of language, like a matchstick dropped by singed fingers that leaves behind charred acres. The deception of language is that we believe it is innocent.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

By the third century, the gesture of giving became miniaturized.

The New Testament offers two compelling models for our relationship with money. When translated into a vision for a whole society, each is flawed.

Who is this leader who issues this warning? Do we even begin to believe that he's the Christ?

"It is by being in solidarity with sinners that Jesus brings about reconciliation. This is not a picture of Jesus that churches often emphasize."

Peter Brown considers the fourth-century church's radicality concerning wealth—and its readiness to adapt as circumstances seemed to require.