Luke 13

I’m now a half-time “missional coach” to a six-church parish. I have many questions.

Having cats did not prepare our family for chickens.

For Luke, sickness is the devil’s work, which Jesus came to combat.

It’s not possible to parent without experiencing risk, weakness, pain, and transformation.

I relate to the servant in Jesus' parable.

Jesus obliterates our internal ledgers and points us to repentance.

Is the fox cunning and clever, or is it wily and untrustworthy?

Amid pandemic and protest, will we turn to each other and live?

Do antisemitic appeals to the Bible always constitute an abuse of scripture? Would that it were so simple.

Jesus’ parables ought to alarm us, draw us short.

When we hear Jesus retort, “Tell that fox….,” we have to keep in mind the litany of intersections between Jesus, his followers, and the Herodian dynasty.

Are we the gardener? Or the fig tree?

Prophecy is a job not for the comfortable but for the afflicted.

Read Tamar or Dinah's story with your church. Listen together for their cries.

Jesus points out ways in which the line has already been dissolved.

The unnamed woman’s healing in this week’s Gospel reading is a story of expansion, revelation, vision widened by grace. There’s more to the story, however.

One of the few fairnesses of life is the fact that each of us is given an equal 168 hours per week. That is where equality in so many ways ends. From that point on our privileges or lack thereof, and the resources they bring, define what we can do with that time.

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.

In December, we lost the last hen in our household flock after a possum attack. Since then, I have heard Jesus’ avian simile in Luke 13:34 differently.

When I read this passage from Luke I immediately remembered an exegesis paper I once wrote after reading an article by a doctor about what disease the woman might have. He concluded that she has a certain kind of arthritis—the same kind I had been recently diagnosed with. This gave me a sense of immediate connection with the woman in the story.

Such personal identification is homiletically useful.