19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, RCL)

During the pandemic, I went six months without touching another human being. I felt starved.

For Jesus, the inverse of scarcity isn’t abundance—it’s accumulation.

Why in the world would Isaiah use the image of snow as a sign of life with God?

In the shadow of uncertainty, fear and hope look similar.

My daughter wants to know. Even as a biblical scholar, I don’t have a good answer.

The Bible provided some healthy agitation as we built coalitions to literally set the captives free.

Can we allow Jesus’ metaphors into our imagination?

Jesus is the thief, and the powers of this world own the house in which we’re waiting.

Why do we forgive him so much more easily than migrants today?

A few years ago, our church installed a new water cooler—not the kind with the clear jug on top but the kind that we used back in grade school. It's a rectangular prism that rises straight from the floor. When you press the circular silver button, water flows in a gentle arc so that you can lap the cooled water up into your mouth. (I had always called that a water fountain, but David, who helped us install it, taught me that a fountain is a landscape feature in your front yard.) We hadn't had a working water cooler at St. John's in a long time, and it was a welcomed addition.

Famously, Obama's term was originally premised on hope. Just as famously, his own faith has been mocked and doubted. I wonder how much of each he has left?

Hope is the content of faith. Hope is the adopted son, the grafted inheritor. If there are to be, as with Abraham’s descendants, innumerable stars and grains of sands, it will be through this boy.

"Belief is not the 'substance of things hoped for.' Faith is."

Are the people of 21st-century Israel the chosen ones of Genesis to whom Yahweh promised the land in eternal covenant? Walter Brueggemann gives a nuanced answer.

Can "Abrahamic" replace "Judeo-Christian"? And without sacrificing the integrity of three different traditions?

How is thankfulness engendered? By giving thanks in all circumstances.