Matthew

If you are ever invited to a gala event where a constitutional monarch is present, you will be told to wear a dark suit or a formal dress—no pants suits for women, no leisure suits for men. Apparently the poor guy in the parable of the wedding banquet didn’t read the small print on his invitation.

Jesus offers a stick in his listeners' eye.

Power always protects itself.

Matthew's story is terrible news. It is also the truth that will make us free.

When I was a kid growing up in the Willamette Valley, local teenagers and migrant laborers would go out together into the strawberry fields to help with the harvest. This parable, with its setting in the vineyard, describes the emotions of us workers—we wanted a fair wage for a fair day’s work.

Jesus knew forgiveness would always need special emphasis.

How do the blessed feel when they think of the damned?

The Hebrew midwives were poised to receive the future that God had promised.

Fear rules the emotions of Joseph’s brothers and strikes the hearts of Jesus’ disciples.

"Have you understood all this?" They said yes. God must still be laughing.

A mother and child wander in the unknown—that place where fears overtake us.

Compared to cosmologists, theologians have the advantage—and disadvantage—of revelation.

Maybe the real reason we show betrayers so little compassion is that we’re afraid there is some Judas chromosome within all of us.

Maybe the real reason we show betrayers so little compassion is that we’re afraid there is some Judas chromosome within all of us.

The Tempter will return again and again. But we are never left alone.

Perhaps the Ancient of Days took great pleasure in these light shows.

The Beatitudes sneak up on us.

Herod tells the Eastern intellectuals the truth, and the rest is history.