January 2021 – Verba Sparsa

Jesus, the Lordists, and the flash flood (Luke 6:46–49)

We have lived in the beautiful foundationless house, and we have seen the flash flood. Now what?

The simplest psalm (Psalm 117)

St. Athanasius said that the Psalter contains in itself a perfect summary of every other part of the Bible. I think we could also say: Psalm 117—the shortest and simplest of the Psalms—sums up the entirety of the Psalter, and so in some sense the entirety of the Bible.

Jesus will always level with us (Luke 6)

In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks to his followers, but in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Jesus speaks to everyone—plainly.

Reading Psalm 102 on Inauguration Day

We are given another opportunity to love our neighbor as ourselves, which must in the final analysis from a godly, biblical perspective be the sole aim and justification for participating in politics.

Being, having, doing: theological roots of political disaster

How a weakness in recent popular evangelical theology produces a susceptibility to mythic history and fascistic politics.

Choosing leaders (Luke 6:12–16)

Luke, like Matthew and Mark, tells of Jesus’s selecting twelve of his disciples for a special roles in service-leadership. John doesn’t bother with the appointment of this dozen. (See Matthew 10:1–4; Mark 3:13–19.) Luke tells it a little differently than Matthew and Mark. Like Mark, he tells us that Jesus went up a mountain toContinue reading “Choosing leaders (Luke 6:12–16)”

Jesus and the Make Israel Holy Again movement

We keep rereading scripture (and other classic texts, but I’m especially interested in scripture) because they strike us differently as our own circumstances change. This morning Luke 6:6–11, which in some seasons has just been for me a Standard Bible Story, smacked me. There was a startling, then painful, recognition, not as in “Oh, IContinue reading “Jesus and the Make Israel Holy Again movement”

The lord of all sabbaths is a fearsome surgeon

In recent days, my mind is continually recalled to Hebrews 4:12 by things that I read elsewhere in Scripture. In Hebrew 4, the writer ponders the Israelites regarding whom the Lord swore, “They will not enter into my (sabbath) rest!” Why not? because when they heard his voice, they were embittered and rejected it, hardeningContinue reading “The lord of all sabbaths is a fearsome surgeon”

Seeing unexpected things (Luke 5:17–26)

In Luke 5:17–26, we have the story of a paralytic who was brought to Jesus for healing. There was such a crowd around Jesus in the house where he was teaching that the friends who brought the paralytic resorted to letting the man down through the roof to get him into Jesus’s presence. They reallyContinue reading “Seeing unexpected things (Luke 5:17–26)”

“The old is nice”: Jesus meets the reflexive conservatives

I have not really reckoned seriously with the parable of the wineskins (Matt 9:14–17; Mark 2:18–22; Luke 5:33–39), and I probably need to. Anyone who is bemused as I am with the various ways in which the labels “conservative” and “progressive” are adopted as self-identifiers and hurled as other-blamers in American politics and religion probablyContinue reading ““The old is nice”: Jesus meets the reflexive conservatives”