Week 12 (Year 3, NL)

We are instructed to love our enemies—not necessarily to forgive them.

Luke describes Jesus riding heroically into Jerusalem on Palm/Passion Sunday. According to archetypal imagery, is Jesus riding to heroic victory or tragic defeat?

Luke offers hints along the way that the trajectory between Palm Sunday and Good Friday is something other than utter failure, but they’re subtle hints: Jesus claims the authority to pardon even as he himself is hanging on the executioner’s cross; as he dies, he continues to discuss his kingdom and paradise.

If this Sunday's service seems crowded and discordant, there’s a historical reason for it: the lectionary readings are a combination of two different local liturgies.

Monastic vows sound familiar to anyone who's been to a wedding. In both marriage and celibacy, we promise to be faithful.

Among the most stimulating books I've read recently is Samuel Wells's Be Not Afraid, from which I picked up the phrase repeated several times in my current lectionary columns for the Century: "What's God up to?" This is the question that counts.

We love to celebrate the peaks of Jesus' life in worship, but how often do we remain with him during the valleys of his life?

The fate of the other thief

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.

Several years ago I attended a museum exhibit featuring the works of Vincent van Gogh. It was not an altogether pleasant experience because there was a man in my group who had a peculiar way of taking in each painting. He would stand about an inch away and then move slowly from one side to another, examining each strand of canvas, each dollop of paint. After he had scanned the entire surface of the painting, he would turn and make his way back across with his right ear about an inch away from the canvas. He examined every single painting in this manner.

It's not like people in Jeremiah's day were asking God for a new covenant.