That is the promise of God to Israel. The book of Jeremiah, the passage we read this Sunday, contains a diverse collection of prose and poetry directed at the kings who reign after King Josiah. The prophet is critical of these kings in that they fail to uphold the law on behalf of the people.  Read more …

Can we look forward to a new normal that is better than before? Before the pandemic the idea of any dramatic change in our simple lives would be unthinkable.  In the last few months we’ve seen such rapid changes in such a short amount of time.  The coronavirus has rebooted every aspect of life as  Read more …

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22.21) Jesus seems to distinguish between what we owe to Caesar and what we owe to God. But is that really what the Gospel lesson is about?  No. The basic message of today’s Gospel is that we  Read more …

The world contains only one thing that is truly novel, forgiveness. Everything else is an old tape repeating itself endlessly over and over again. There is normally only one song that gets sung: betrayal-hurt-resentment-non-forgiveness. That pattern never changes. There is an unbroken chain of unforgiven resentment and anger stretching back to Adam and Eve. We are  Read more …

I’m sure you’ve heard and read about how we are supposed to be giving people. While we may accept and agree with that, many of us have an inner dialogue that occurs when God asks us to give something. We wonder why God is asking us to give, especially if we don’t have much to  Read more …

Remember me Death is nothing at all, but the beginning of another life.I have only slipped into the next roomI am I and you are youwhatever we were to each other that we are still.Call me by my old familiar name,Speak to me in the easy way which you always usedLaugh as we always laughed  Read more …

The Feast of All Souls’ Day, when we remember and pray for the dead, has weighted significance this year when so many have died of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s restrictions has prevented usual funeral services and final goodbyes in person. About 228,000 people in the United States alone have died of COVID-19.As that number continues  Read more …

The earliest Christians identified Jesus with the predicted Messiah of the Jews. The Jewish word “messiah,” and the Greek word “Christ,” both mean “anointed one,” and came to refer to the expected king who would deliver Israel from the hands of the Romans.   Christians believe that Jesus is this expected Messiah.  Unlike the messiah  Read more …

In the celebration of the Eucharist, the glorified Christ becomes present under the appearances of bread and wine in a way that is unique, a way that is uniquely suited to the Eucharist. In the Church’s traditional theological language, in the act of consecration during the Eucharist the “substance” of the bread and wine is  Read more …

Observe how crafty Jesus’ enemies are, the ones he calls “hypocrites.” They go off and plot how they might trap Jesus “in speech.” This sounds like presidential electoral debates in the United States, where opponents study their adversaries’ beliefs ahead of time, regardless of what these might mean in real life. The point is not  Read more …