A few months ago, my wife started watching The Righteous Gemstones, which means that I was kind of watching it, too, while reading on the couch. For those who are not familiar with the show, it’s a comedy that follows a wealthy televangelist/megachurch family that employs rather un-Christian behavior to perpetuate their ministry empire. Quite … Continue reading The Righteous Gemstones and Moses and the Prophets
Over a weekend during my junior year of college, I decided to read all three Synoptic Gospels. I must confess that until this weekend, I had never read these Gospels in their entirety. Growing up Lutheran and attending church every Sunday, I was familiar with many parts of the Gospels. However, I had never actually … Continue reading Epigenetic Disagreeablness and Jesus
The first Sunday in Lent is my favorite Sunday in the church year. The reason is because of the Gospel reading. Every year, no matter year A, B, or C, the Gospel reading is the wilderness temptation of Jesus. Though Mark’s account does not include the three temptations we find in Matthew and Luke, there … Continue reading Jesus’ VisionQuest
Author's Note: Some months ago, I wrote about Joseph, and in some respects, I think I may have been too harsh concerning his becoming "Egyptian." After some more study and reflection, it prompted me to consider something I had not before: that, of course, Joseph would embrace Egyptianization given how good Pharaoh had been to … Continue reading Out of Dodge and Back Again!
For the past two years, I have taught a course at LMU on the narrative of the scriptures during the spring semester. Part of the curriculum includes watching the 2014 movie Noah after examining Genesis 1-6. Because I have taught multiple sections of the course each semester, I have now gotten to watch Noah multiple … Continue reading Damned if I don’t take what I want!
Over the past four years, my anxiety has gotten the better of me more than I would like to admit. When we left New York close to four years ago, we left with many unknowns before us. We had two clear goals in mind when we came to California: the first was for Becca to … Continue reading It’s not me, it’s my amygdala! Luke 12:22-34 in anxious perspective
One of the more entertaining parts about working maintenance for Concordia-New York during the summers was that you never knew what you might come across on any given day. Given that the campus was quite old, with a myriad of old buildings as well as properties off the main campus, you could find yourself on … Continue reading When I grow up I want to be a bully!
To this day, I can still remember walking home after an incredibly awkward and strange meeting with a person of importance and feeling incredibly uncomfortable with the way it went. If I might hearken to the great Maya Angelou, over that hour, that person showed me who they truly were, and I believed them that … Continue reading Matthew 18: why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?
Some years ago, I received a phone call from a funeral home director asking me if I could do a funeral for a family that claimed to be members of the church I served. When he shared the name of the deceased, I did not recognize it, so I respectfully told him so. Still, the … Continue reading “I’m sorry, who?”
These are familiar words of Jesus, said in response to his disciples’ shock at both the rejection of the wealthy man and his words about it being easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom. Given the context, the force of the … Continue reading “What is impossible with human beings, is possible with God…” or “trying to put a square peg in a round hole.”
A Foolish Way 