Luke 16:1-13 (online here) Jesus was not above challenging any rule that we think everybody should live by. This lesson is a prime example. A boss lets his employee know that he's about to fire him for mishandling money. Before he can [...]
Exodus 32:7-14 (online here) This is a remarkable reading! God sounds amazingly vindictive, ready to wipe out the very people God had just freed from slavery—all of them, with the sole exception of Moses. Just as amazingly, Moses has the nerve to [...]
Luke 14:25-33 (online here) There are lots of people who associate Jesus with conservative family values. I guess they haven't been reading the Gospels. In today's lesson Jesus says, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and [...]
Luke 14:1, 7-14 (online here) Jesus seems concerned with how we use what ought to be celebrations as opportunities for advancement. Don't do that, he says. When you're a guest at a great banquet, don't use the invitation you get as a [...]
Luke 13:10-17 (online here) Stories like this week’s Gospel reading tempt us to overlook how thoroughly Jewish Jesus was.* Here he gets in an argument with a synagogue leader over how to observe the Sabbath. And almost 2,000 years later, those of [...]
Luke 12:49-56 (online here) Most of us these days are suffering from what we might call tweet fatigue. You may not use Twitter (in fact, I don’t use it), but like it or not, we’ve all had to learn what tweets are, [...]
Genesis 15:1-6 (online here); Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 (online here) Almost a decade ago I taught a course entitled “Responding to the New Atheism” at Christian Theological Seminary. A number of best-selling books had come out, written by atheists who blamed terrorism on [...]
Colossians 3:1-11 (online here); Luke 12:13-21 (online here) “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” “Put to death … whatever in you is earthly,” “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” [...]
Luke 11:1-13 (online here) Do you ever wonder about prayer? Well ... duh! I’ve never met anybody who didn’t wonder about prayer. I mean, just what does it do? Sure, sometimes good things happen for people who pray, but so do bad [...]
Luke 10:38-42 (online here) I have a friend who these days teaches religion at one of the "Little Ivy League" colleges. He's a bit embarrassed to recall how enthusiastic he was back in the days of the Jesus Movement—you know, that time [...]