“All under the power of sin” is not a place we want to begin. It isn’t very flattering. But we can’t buy our way out or even work our way…
Oh, don’t you just hate to have to admit that you were wrong? We hear a lot about privilege these days, being privileged. Privilege isn’t just gets more; it is…
Paul takes much of the first chapter of Romans to articulate the trouble: it’s a big trouble and deeply troubling. It has caused all of us all kinds of trouble. …
We’re hearing hard things. Paul is explaining the meaning of what we can see everyday but perhaps not quite understand. It ought to be comprehensible. Some find it very difficult…
This last Sunday of the year and next Sunday, we will be hearing some hard things: hard to hear, perhaps hard to accept. The starting point is this: why is…
One of the big Jewish holy days is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: the day above all others for seeking God’s forgiveness for the failure to live as God…
My mother-in-law grew up in The Bronx, attending, as I found out several years back, a Presbyterian church. In the same neighborhood were many Jews, observant Jews. “Did you know…
“Not one of us” (9:49). I am not interested in hindering others, but I am interested in strengthening the church: healthy, vital, vibrant, whole. The church is strengthened when we…
Luke tells us that “the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John” (7:30). So, it is possible…
We have the teaching. We have the promise. Henceforth, we have ministry. In the early seventies, a German theologian of some note wrote a book: The Church in the Power…