We did not read as our OT lesson today the Wisdom of Solomon passage, for two reasons. One, its message is jarring: – “the forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison in them, and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.” The suffering of billions of people down through the […]

The Bible might be described as one long, epic attempt to picture to worldly man the nature of the otherworldly. It is an effort made in many different voices to surround the nature of God and convey the kingdom of heaven. Since this is an obvious impossibility, the effort relies on poetry and prophecy and […]

“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Repeat.) Sermons on this morning’s gospel sometimes spring from Jesus’ quoting Lincoln about a house divided against itself. Or they riff on the meaning of families, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and […]

God came to meet us in a three-fold figure: 1) as the Creator, the Lord of all history, the Father and Judge revealed in the Old Testament, who spoke through the prophets, the God who kept coming back for his people.2) as the Lord who came to us in the person of God’s only Son […]