21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, RCL)

This election season, we've seen a lot of hatred and inhospitality directed toward Muslims and toward migrants. There is talk of building walls instead of bridges, a focus on fueling the politics of fear instead of concern for human need.

In 1 Kings 8 we see an alternative.

In Galatians, Paul is confrontational. While we should be more cautious about calling other people "foolish," we can learn from him that tolerance shouldn't depend on denying one's faith, and being grounded in one's faith shouldn't lead to intolerance or coercion.

When I was in my mid 20s, I came down with pneumonia bad enough that I had to spend two weeks in the hospital. I felt cut off from everything. I had no idea what things were like on the outside.

In our Gospel text, some of Jesus’ disciples find his teaching hard. Eating his body? Drinking his blood? I didn’t sign up for this. Couldn’t I just pray for you?

As I watched Inside Out, I found myself thinking about Augustine's assertion that we are what we love and what we hate.

I often think I hear colleagues asking, “How could we attract nuns to our church?” Actually they’re talking about “the nones,” of course. One of the clearest findings of the Pew Forum’s new religious landscape study is that fewer and fewer people have any religious affiliation at all. Catholics and mainline Protestants show the biggest drop. 

I feel pretty conflicted about all of this.

Offering the elements to the unbaptized can be seen as a development and not a revolution, but it is a significant change. Is it a good one?

Halloween's tradition of shadowy characters makes it as good a time as any to think on the reality of evil, sin and death that besets us.

Excellent Christian preaching names and explores the shadows in order to declare that the light shines in the darkness.

After Solomon built the Temple, or rather, after his laborers built it, he stood and offered a prayer for its dedication.  In his prayer, he admitted that the Temple, for all its human splendor, could not contain or limit God.

"Mary has chosen the better part," says Jesus, "and it will not be taken away from her." This is not what Jesus is supposed to say.

Our armor always loses because our weapons are consistently one step ahead of our protection.

Who is Jesus really? The answers are almost as varied as the believers.

Jesus called the Twelve together and put the question to them with unsettling directness: Do you also wish to go away? I wonder sometimes how I would have responded to the question. Because at times the truth is I do wish to go away.