Judica 2023
The University of Helsinki announced this week they are awarding Greta Thunberg with an honorary doctorate in, of all things, theology. It’s fitting, I suppose, since climate activism has become a religion in its own right….
Read MoreThe University of Helsinki announced this week they are awarding Greta Thunberg with an honorary doctorate in, of all things, theology. It’s fitting, I suppose, since climate activism has become a religion in its own right….
Read MoreIf we charted the history of the age for admission to communion, you would see it be very low for well over a thousand years, then rise sharply in the ages of rationalism and pietism, until the mid-to-late twentieth century when it begins to come back down. There are a number of factors involved in this, but underlying it all is this question: what makes a person ready to receive the Eucharist? …
Read MoreThere is a spiritual realm. There are demonic powers. And if our eyes were opened, we would see it at work in our world, with terrifying intensity.
Demons harm people. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about the danger of people being freed from the demonic returning to its servitude, because—the image goes—the house was not furnished. There was no change….
Read MoreOnce they walk, we don’t carry our children anymore. Until they’re sick, or something is wrong; then we revert to treating them like babies, carrying them, wishing we could take all their burdens unto ourselves.
But we can’t. This father knows that. That’s why he says to Jesus, “I carried my son to you.”
How many times had he made similar journeys, carrying his son to physicians, priests, anyone who might be able to help?
His boy seems to have two problems: he’s alalon - what we would today call “non-verbal” - and he has seizures. They cause him to writhe on the ground, foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and then be non-responsive.
The father attributes all this to demonic activity.
It’s quite natural to say, “Well, today we know better. We have sciency words for it: autism, and seizures.”…
Read MoreTemptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.
Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….
Read MoreThe ashes show us the end. The end of the gods we serve.
The gods of pride, power, pleasure. You serve them with prurience, preening, pouting. You prate and prattle, but do you repent? Do you change? What has your service to the gods of this age really achieved? Where will it get you? Dust and ashes, nothing but….
Read MoreA wise man once said, “Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind.” Does that describe your life? It’s tempting to imagine that this is the result of our always-connected devices, with the expectation that you work from the moment you awake until the moment before your head hits the pillow. Certainly the ability to be on another continent in a matter of hours, and the twenty-four hour news cycle, leads to a frenzied sort of existence. But at its core, the saying reflects a very old problem. This saying—“Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind”—this saying comes from The Wisdom of Sirach [11.11 NJB], a second-century BC Jewish book similar to Proverbs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I read from the NJB; the ESV is a bit more stately: “There is a man who works and toils and presses on, but falls behind so much the more.”
That idea of failing, falling, falling behind – it’s a universal human experience. Try as we might to accumulate resources, it’s never enough. And time, our most precious commodity, is steadily ticking away. All the fears about population and climate change reflect the human anxiety that we are running short, lacking, dying.
That’s what underlies today’s Gospel. It’s a real event, not a parable. Jesus really did change water into wine at Cana. It’s not fiction – but it is loaded with symbolism. Running out of wine makes the wedding a failure….
Read MoreWhen the Scriptures describe us as being in bondage to sin, it certainly includes the sins we commit - the twisted lusts within us and the things we do contrary to the commandments. But often the sins committed against us also hold us in bondage: when someone betrays us, when a friend you trusted doesn’t keep his word or is working against you. Perhaps you remember a cutting remark spoken against you even decades ago, but still it lingers in the mind, making you bitter, cynical. And so it’s not only the sins that we have committed, but also the sins committed against us, that need to be dealt with.
We would like justice. We want things put right. And sometimes, we want more than justice: we want revenge. For the person whose betrayal still stings, misfortune upon them would, we imagine, taste sweet to us….
Read MoreIn the days of Herod the king, men asked, “Where is He who has been born king of the Jews?”
A dangerous question! Herod was notoriously paranoid, and notoriously ruthless. He eliminated anyone he perceived a threat. This included several sons. To call Herod “troubled” at this news is a masterclass in understatement…
Read MoreDoubtless you’ve heard the myth—and it is most certainly a myth—that the Christian holy days were borrowed from older pagan festivals. You do find this kind of thing in Latin America, where Roman Catholic missionaries renamed local deities as Mary or one of the saints, so the people continued to worship the same statues but with new names. It’s called christopaganism. But that all happened much later. I’m talking about the origins of Christianity.
Jesus probably was born on December 25, or a day close to it. But today, January 1, was a day the early Christians resisted celebrating. That’s because New Year’s Day was “kept with great riot and licence by the pagans” …
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