Matthew

To be a follower of the one who promised that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed is to expect a blessed in-breaking of peace.

To be a follower of the one who promised that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed is to expect a blessed in-breaking of peace.

As we contemplate mortality and finitude, I wonder if we could treasure washing the dishes.

Let’s build shrines, Peter says. He doesn’t know how to respond to a mystical mountaintop experience, and he’s afraid.

Two new books on immigration complement each other well. And where Todd Miller’s falls short, Deirdre Cornell’s shines most brightly.

"Why you even invite us to any of this," asked Richard, "if you’re just gonna humiliate us and throw us out?"

I eschew the danger of the river, but I know that it is where God leads me.

I know of a congregation that, for many years, provided a “living nativity pageant” in its community. The church is in the center of town and has an expansive front lawn. On a certain December Sunday afternoon each year, it would fill that lawn with live sheep and goats and donkeys, costumed shepherds and wise men, a gaggle of angels, an innkeeper, a manger, and, of course, the holy family.

The Magi's alien exoticism is an intrinsic part of Matthew's story.

I don’t know what a perfect first-century family looked like, but I’m certain that Joseph and Mary didn’t qualify.

If you happen to read the Message translation of Matthew’s beatitudes, you’ll notice that instead of saying “blessed” the word is “happy.”

We have, in fact, been given a simple code for living.

It often feels like a rhetorical game, this question of what belongs to God.

The hyperbole, violence, and abrupt scene changes in Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast have driven most interpreters to treat the story allegorically—thereby turning it from a dangerous puzzle to a reassuring message in code.

What if the agreed daily wage is forgiveness and eternal life?

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

Ezekiel steps right into the middle of a group of people busy at that most ancient of activities, going back to Eden: the blame game.