Revelation 7:9-17 Saints aren’t just people who appear on somebody’s official list. That’s one meaning, of course, and a legitimate one. But “to sanctify” originally means “to set apart,” or “to single out,” so “saint” means God’s “set-apart,” “singled-out” people—the people singled out [...]
Matthew 22:34-40; Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-19, 33-34 (I’ve cropped off part of one lesson and added a couple of verses to the other to bring out some comparisons.) Everybody loves Jesus’ teaching about the Great Commandment: Love God with your whole self; [...]
Luke 4:14-21 Toward the end of the first century, somebody wrote a two-volume work. The first volume looks a lot like the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The second volume tells us about the work of the early church in the first [...]
Matthew 22:15-22 "Give ... to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." This is one of Jesus' better-known sayings. It can be interpreted several different ways. Some people use it to justify separation [...]
Exodus 32:1-14 What is our Bible doing with this story of a God who has to be shamed into forgiveness? How can Moses change God’s mind? We love to chant “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases” (Lam. 3:22), but God’s [...]
Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46 Isaiah and Jesus both tell us stories about vineyards. In both lessons, the vineyard is a metaphor for the community of love and justice God yearns to see established among us. But these vineyards produce the opposite—they keep [...]
Philippians 2:1-13 Years before the first Gospels were written, maybe even decades before, the earliest Christians were sharing the story of Jesus through hymns they could quickly memorize. Paul quotes one of them in this week’s reading. Here’s how it probably went as [...]
Matthew 20:1-16 Some people have been working all day, while others show up later and later, right up to the last minute. At the end of the day their employer decides to pay everybody for a full day's work, even the latest [...]
Matthew 18:21-35 Are there limits to forgiveness? No—and yes. Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who harms him. Jesus answers that he should forgive so often that he's bound to lose count (77 times, or perhaps 490 times—texts [...]
Romans 13:8-14 “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” So says St. Paul. You can read passage after passage in the Bible, and more often than not you wind up wondering, "Just what the bleep am I supposed to do [...]