Week 11 (Year 2, NL)

To plant anything—even hope—is a risk.

Blessed are those who read this wise and lovely book.

My daughter wants to know. Even as a biblical scholar, I don’t have a good answer.

I'm always amused when folk are keen enough to notice the worship whiplash to which the tradition so often subjects them.

Preachers who value their pulpit would be wise to avoid Isaiah 9 this Christmas Eve.

The Bible uses the word fear both for fright and awe. This week's texts reveal the difference.

Jesus' parable of the so-called "wicked tenant farmers" is a textbook illustration—a parody, even—of the economic and political dynamics of empire.

Come to the river, wash away your sins, start a new life. Now—because something is coming.

The Peaceable Kingdom pricks my conscience every time I see it because of the enormous gap between its vision and the world's reality.

I am confident that the new creation will include animals. I hope that it will include Merle, my deceased smooth-coat collie.

Isaiah gives us a vision of what the new anointed one will be like, what gifts he will have and how he will be someone run by Elsewhere—not by the criteria of groupthink, of lobbying groups. His criteria will give voice to the meek who have no voice and don’t know how to use a voice. His words will become the criteria for everything, much to the dismay of the wicked.

Isaiah 5:1-7

Isaiah and the Baptizer conspire to give us animal dreams in this dark season of Advent. The earlier prophet’s vision warms our hearts. Who among us hasn’t yearned for a world in which lambs could hang out with wolves and adders behave as though Mr. Rogers had taught them how to play with children? A strange political critter appears in the dream as well, one that’s not the puppet of pollsters and the powerful, but a leader with the heart and Spirit of God.