First Sunday in Lent (Year C, RCL)

Surely God isn’t a narcissist who demands our attention.

While struggling with this question as a church songwriter, I came up with six guidelines.

Deuteronomy offers instructions for what to do after not 40 days but 40 years of wandering.

The wilderness can be a frightening landscape that whispers from the shadows, “You’re all alone.”

The psalter’s wisdom, illuminated from five perspectives

In Torah, the stranger appears as a guest to be welcomed, not a problem to be solved.

Jesus enacts the very things we humans have been unable to enact on our own.

Lent invites us to pay attention to our hunger.

We don't need arguments from the pulpit. We need living water.

“No evil shall befall us,” said St. Anthony in the desert, preachers during the Rwandan genocide, and Americans after 9/11.

Who tests Abraham, or Jacob, or Jesus—and why?

It's not always what we would choose for ourselves.

Matthew 4:1–11

And what would happen if we didn't?

This Sunday's passage from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome seems to be an example of Year C's theological focus on those who are living in a state of alienation from Jesus Christ and the church. Yet when I think about rebuilding the bridges of love, trust, and belonging in contemporary Christian community, Paul isn't the first person who comes to mind.