Luke 8

Kenosis, solidarity, and discipleship

Jesus, too, encountered a naked man living with mental torment. He responded quite differently.

Jesus in conversation with three women in the Gospels

Sometimes the terror we know is more tolerable than the peace we can’t imagine.

Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington’s dialogue is most illuminating when the co-authors disagree.

What does it look like to embody the peace of the city of God?

The practice plays a big role in Christianity—and not just on the fringes.

Incarceration is a tomb. It beats death into people.

Narratives of fear, domination, and greed abound. But there's a better story.

In the United Church of Canada, a liberal congregation is growing. Here's how.

I relate to physical sickness more easily than mental illness. So does our culture.

Transformation often has a price. There is a cost to freedom, even freedom from demons.

Growing up it was in the kitchen every Sunday where I would witness the most frenetic, clamorous work of our church community.

The satisfaction theory of the atonement centers on debt, humanity’s debt to God. It’s often criticized for its gruesome picture of God. But it also paints a weird picture of Jesus: Christ the Debt Buyer.

Many people are bound. Some don’t even know it. The difference between being free and being bound is at the center of our Gospel text this week.

When I read this week’s passage from Luke, I take an aerial view. My perspective shifts from the disciples to Jesus, then to Simon the Pharisee, then to the bystanders, and finally to the woman who washes Jesus’ feet.

In the context of a seminary class behind bars, Jesus' question to Simon is a probing and challenging one.

A while back I spent a good chunk of a week at a denominational pastors' retreat in the Alberta foothills just north of Calgary. One of the things we did during our worship times each day was spend some time “dwelling in the Word.” The specific text we focused on each session was Luke 7:36-50, the story where Jesus is anointed by a “sinful woman” at the home of Simon the Pharisee. It’s a scandalous story—a woman of ill repute showing up a bunch of religious elites, crashing their party with her sensuous, inappropriate display of penitence, love, and devotion.