Third Sunday in Lent (Year B, RCL)

From the beginning—“I am the Lord your God”—the Decalogue is about vocation.

Jesus isn't just reforming temple practices.

The church at Corinth had many problems. Some simple kindness would have helped.

Black people can eat at most lunch counters and travel across state lines without being consigned to the back of the bus. But the fundamental right to life continues to be haunted by white supremacy.

James reminds us of the duplicity of language, like a matchstick dropped by singed fingers that leaves behind charred acres. The deception of language is that we believe it is innocent.

David Carr rereads the familiar materials of the Bible in conversation with trauma theory. This opens the way for a fresh and suggestive interpretation.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

It’s hard to deny these little echoes of the synoptics which John reshapes for his own dramatic purposes. It seems narratively wrong for Jesus to cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry rather than at the climactic end. It makes more sense if one hears Luke in the background ever so slightly—Jesus’ claiming of the temple as his father’s house and his identity as the Son. Here in John, he has just performed a miracle at his mother’s behest, bringing spirit into the most fleshly event of human life. Now he goes to what is supposedly a spiritual place and finds only flesh. No wonder he is annoyed.

When the disciples try to explain Jesus’ wrath, they quote Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” John neglects to include the verse just before it, however.

"Remember the sabbath" is a costly commandment. Our culture’s assault on it extends far beyond Sunday.

How can Paul navigate the choppy waters of a pagan environment, with its idols and temples? The obvious place to start is the Shema.

Rod Dreher revealed recently that he couldn't come up with more than six of the Ten Commandments from memory. He also pointed out the irony of this fact coming from someone who often gets on his "high horse about theological ignorance," so I won't pile on.

I've mentioned before that, while I haven't retained everything I learned at my evangelical grade school, I do recall a catchy song for remembering the U.S. presidents in order. We also performed a lot of musicals, including the popular '80s Christmas program Angels Aware.

Paul has a way with a sneer. Nineteen times in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions wisdom, and each time we hear a growing sneer in his voice, until he nominates Christ as the wisdom of God. The word "wisdom" is distasteful to him because it is wooing the Corinthians to pursue a dead wisdom when they might turn to a wisdom he calls the "source of life"--and come alive.  

When Paul writes that Christ is the wisdom of God, he's tapping into an ancient way of speaking about God. He's drilling down into proverbs, where wisdom plays the part of the creative spirit of God. Wisdom is begotten of God, the firstborn of all creation, the very spirit alive in Creation, a feminine expression of God. This isn't just some hocus pocus stuff from the Old Testament, either. The New Testament writers are so influenced by this thinking that they pay homage to Lady Wisdom everywhere.

"You're a preacher, I can tell," the woman said to me. "But not yet."

For better or for worse, the sex columnist provides real-time exegesis of the seventh commandment.

In the synoptic accounts of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus is being provocative. In John, he is provoked.