Month: August 2016
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Continuing Education
Our Hebrew Bible professor in seminary gave our class this practical advice: file your sermons by book of the Bible; read every day; make a special study of one book every month. I finally decided to take the advice about the special study, and developed a five-year study plan that breaks up the books […]
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Reflections on someone’s statement about gun violence
My father was a Mennonite. It bothered him that we kids learned “Onward Christian Soldiers” at church. He never bought my brother a toy gun. Me, either, of course – girls didn’t play with guns when I was a kid. There has never been a gun in a house I’ve lived in – my […]
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22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Over the centuries, people have come to realize that the book of Hebrews is one of the more mysterious books in the Bible. We don’t know who wrote it. Many have thought it was Paul, but today we’re taught in seminary to echo the church Father Origin in saying “God alone knows who wrote it.”
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A Protocol for Critical Thinking
Here is one way to think about what “critical thinking” is: a set of concrete questions. When we ask ourselves these questions, and follow appropriate procedures for answering them, we are “doing” critical thinking.
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Something about Athens and Jerusalem
The “history of western civilization” has for centuries and in textbook after textbook told a story about “western culture” being the world-historical synthesis of Greek-and-Roman and Hebrew cultures. For religion in particular, this mixed marriage was destined for conflict, at least according to one way of reading the fundamental dynamics of the situation:
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Let Me Get Back to You …
Teacher: “What, if anything, do you want to know about me?” Student: “What is your opinion of Kanye West?” It’s like an assignment.
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Exegetical Exercise Hebrews 13 1-8, 15-16
Of the choices offered in the Revised Common Lectionary, Hebrews 13:1-8 & 15-16 seems like the one that could speak to the people at the small rural church where I agreed to preach on Sunday better than others on the list. The context is the question of “acceptable worship” of a God who is a […]
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21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
The lectionary’s gospel text for the 21 Sunday after Pentecost is Luke 13:10-17, a story of Jesus healing a woman with what we modern people would probably recognize as severe arthritis, although perhaps her condition was something different. She is sometimes called “the bent woman,” because of the way her condition forces her to stand […]
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Power Supply
The power supply to the laptop started sizzling and smoking in the middle of the Session meeting tonight. It was one of those horrifying situations the full horror of which only dawned on my consciousness slowly, like a monstrous movie octopus. The deadline tomorrow. The deadline Sunday. The class on Monday. How long it took […]
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About Ethical Responsibility
“Doing what the Bible says” does not simply do away with the need to decide among values – including Biblical ones.
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Another Outline for “Western Religions”
I keep trying to organize the material in the introduction to the “western” world religions class I sometimes teach in a way that allows us to cover off the religion trivia/jeopardy questions (In “All About Abe” for $100: “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” buzz “What are the Abrahamic religions?”) and still think about more general organizing […]
Matters of Interpretation 