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Come away
Read more: Come awayThe Hebrew scholar Naham M Sarna notes that there’s a crescendo that happens when God tells Abraham to “go.” God lists all that Abram would be leaving behind in increasing intimacy, increasing seriousness. “Leave your native land, leave your extended family, leave your father’s house. I am taking you somewhere new.” Quite a big ask,…
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Dominant powers versus ultimate powers
Read more: Dominant powers versus ultimate powersIt was starting to feeling like maybe, just maybe, the bad guys didn’t have to keep winning. Maybe giants could fall. Maybe, as the Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber says, dominant powers would not turn out to be ultimate powers. The next Halloween, for my work’s costume contest, I dressed up for Halloween as a cell phone…
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The things we hold in common
Read more: The things we hold in commonSome translations use the word “generosity” instead of simplicity, and that’s because the word we’re looking at is somewhere between idiom and metaphor in the original Greek. The word is “aphelotes” and its literal translation is something like “the opposite of stubbing your toe.” It’s something you do on accident, without even realizing it until…
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By faith,
Read more: By faith,For example, there’s this one woman, Priscilla. In the Book of Acts, in the Epistle to the Romans, in the 1st letter to the Corinthians, and in Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy, she’s described as a colleague to the Apostle Paul, a collaborator, an equal. She even went on to have churches named after her.…
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What you get when you sell all you have
Read more: What you get when you sell all you haveOne of the most respected dictionaries of ecclesiastical Greek tells us this is often used as a foil to the “fragmentary and frail” life of this world, that it’s something you seek to acquire now as much as in the future. It’s sort of an exchange you make, where you give up attachment to the…
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Assistant Regional Managers of the planet
Read more: Assistant Regional Managers of the planetGod made sky and water and earth and heaven and birds and fish and beasts and creeping things and plants and called all of it good. Then, to top it all off, God made humans. God said “let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule the fish of the…
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I’d like to speak to God, please
Read more: I’d like to speak to God, pleaseThe book of Job has something of a reputation for being a book about suffering, but I think that’s not the whole picture. I can see why people think of Job and think of suffering. Suffering is both the inciting incident and the setting of the book. I just don’t think it’s about suffering. I…
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You should probably have imposter syndrome
Read more: You should probably have imposter syndromeThe passage Joe just read is the opening to the book of Ruth, a short story found in the portion of the Hebrew Scriptures that Christians have adopted as canon. In Jewish canon, it’s grouped with the five megillot, or scrolls—a collection of books that, liturgically, accompany Jewish festivals. The book of Ruth accompanies the…
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Why I won’t give up the “s” word
Read more: Why I won’t give up the “s” wordEach of the gospels–Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John–have their own way of telling the story of Jesus. The author of Luke gave us a literary epic. We get the whole story of Jesus, from birth to resurrection, with a big chunk in the middle that is focused on Jesus’ public teachings. Luke spends 60% of…
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Feed my sheep
Read more: Feed my sheepThis chapter of the book of John is known to biblical scholars as the Appendix. While every copy of John’s gospel that exists includes this chapter—so it’s unlikely that it was added on by a different author, or completely after the fact—it’s clear for literary reasons that the original writer of the gospel of John…
God and us
A prophet’s true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.
Abraham Joshua Heschel