22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, RCL)

James is looking at the big picture.

Jesus warns that the real danger lies within our minds and hearts.

Which one has a greater hold on my heart? Let’s take a look.

We are human beings, wired for sensual interaction.

Hearing the word and doing it aren’t as far apart as Martin Luther thought.

It began when I realized the church has always had a process for changing its mind.

The promises and dangers of Israel’s new coalition government

How one youth leader stopped being a chief counselor of fun and discovered something better.

And are we practicing it?

What does it mean to be seen as a defiled person?

My first piano teacher, Mr. Jackson, was the best. I didn't like him.

We love to look at people and judge them on the basis of what we see. We looked at Lance Armstrong and saw a guy who beat cancer and won Tour de France titles. We saw Bill Cosby as a barrier-breaking comedian and father figure.

I don’t know about you, but I find it challenging to preach on non-narrative texts. It’s easy to make a good story from the Gospels or the Old Testament come alive in a sermon. It’s a lot harder to do that with a theological treatise, so I tend to neglect preaching on the epistles.

My childhood church used offering envelopes with six checkboxes on them, a sort of spiritual scorecard. When I finally met James, hiding behind Paul, I proudly showed him my envelope. He laughed.

Members from more than 500 congregations marched in Charlotte, North Carolina, last October as part of the “10 Percent Is Enough” campaign. While conceding that careless spending is the chief cause of consumer debt and needs to be addressed, march organizers object to credit companies' enticing offers of easy credit, their increased interest rates and their profitable penalties. The "10 percent" campaign proposes a cap on interest rates.

Song of Songs is a forgotten book, hidden away between pragmatic Ecclesiastes and monumental Isaiah, but if you look, you’ll find it, shining with summer’s golden light.

Mark's story is about the irony of keeping our hands ritually washed while being up to our elbows in evil.