Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year B, RCL)

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.

It is not pain and violence that God desires, says the preacher of Hebrews. It is human life as God created it to be, summoned it to be.

Edgar lived alone in a welfare motel among prostitutes and drug abusers. He was a bit rough around the edges and would sometimes get loud and demanding. But for all his rough edges, Edgar was the only person who passed for a pastor in that backwater parish of broken souls. And there could be no more fertile soil for biblical "church growth" than the concrete motel parking lot and those waiting children of God with their wisdom "from below."

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

It's not like people in Jeremiah's day were asking God for a new covenant.

How does the way God regenerates us resemble and differ from the way we regenerate ourselves?