1 Corinthians

The preacher must remind those who feel worthless already that Isaiah is not trying to make them feel worse.

Gothic cathedral. A gay couple approaches holding hands. “Step aside, please,” say the muscle-bound guards. They speak similar words to an African-American girl, a Hispanic man, a young man in a wheelchair. Then, just as we realize that the two large men are “church bouncers,” the scene fades to black and the tag line reads: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”

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.

The opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry left no doubt: a commitment to Jesus involves a commitment to build communities of peace and justice. But first comes the calling.

In an account in which only Satan, wild animals, and angels are with Jesus, the reader is also present.

It’s been said that the lessons of history are never clear, and when they are they’re usually wrong.

Jonah is prophetic minimalism gone amok.

In the United States, it is rare to hear someone define herself as belonging to someone else. Here, we belong to ourselves.

You can’t micromanage a road trip. The wind blows where it wills.

"Love never ends,” St. Paul writes in the lesson we read from 1 Corinthians 13. Or, put more positively, “love abides.” What does that really mean—to say that “love abides”? Or, indeed, what possible sense could it make to say this in a world in which the truth so clearly seems to be that love quite often does not abide?

When two or more are gathered, factions lurk.