Month: December 2016
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Exegetical Exercise – Ephesians 5 15-16
There is a long section of “paraenetic” material in Ephesians, which my seminary New Testament professor, Marty Soards, told us was there to offset the heady idealistic realized eschatology of chapters 1-3. All of it sounds like the stuff New Year’s resolutions. [In Christ, of course – Ephesians is clear that we don’t have power […]
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On Saying “Yes” to the Dress
Now that Christmas is over and we are back in town from visiting relatives and shopping with Christmas money, it turns out it is time to shop for prom. This is because waiting till the second or third week of January for an occasion that occurs in the spring guarantees that the early birds have […]
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Justified Extravagance
Over dinner we talked about something that seemed incomprehensibly extravagant, unjustifiably expensive, to us. “I would never spend $100 on …” “Well, if you cared about fashion – not me, of course, but if you did …” “I do buy art; I suppose some people would think spending money on art is crazy …” “Some […]
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Anger Guilty and Not
The American Psychological Association defines “anger” as “an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, however, defines “anger” as “a desire for revenge.” (§2302). A desire for revenge seems more intentional to me than an emotion, which seems more like a […]
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Rare Ingredients
I grated orange zest the other day. Grating orange zest made me notice that baking has something in common with magic. Orange zest is not a particularly rare ingredient, at least not in the 21st century United States. Thank you, Florida and California! I noticed this as I pondered what to do with the extra […]
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Cultural Symbolism, or Baking at Christmas
I have done some baking this Christmas, for the first time in at least a decade. I’m not entirely sure why I stopped baking at Christmas; it was probably some combination of busy-ness and overwhelm and the idea that we don’t need all that sugar around anyway and resistance and avoidance and the “complex system […]
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Exegetical Exercise – Gifts in Ephesians
The “book of the month” program has given me Ephesians this December. At first this seemed unseasonable, what with no nativity stories, or direct references to Advent. But digging deeper – it turns out there is a lot of “giving” and there are a lot of “gifts” in Ephesians, which certainly resonates with the popular […]
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Seasons’ Greetings
Since my father died, I have tried to re-establish the practice of sending Christmas cards. It was a response to shame, as my personal initiatives often are. My dad sent Christmas cards, I realized when I cleaned out the house, to just about everyone he had ever known, and just about everyone Mom had ever […]
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Maybe Not So Little
An article showed up in my Flipboard feed yesterday, “Little Things Can Make an Atheist.” I read it, because I was curious to see what the “little things” were. It struck me that the “little things” the author referred to were specific theological claims, rather than propositions about defensibility of the reality of [any version […]
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4th Sunday in Advent
The text for class this morning was Luke 1:8-23 – “the vision of Zechariah,” sometimes called – and I am curious about it. Zechariah is serving as a priest in the Temple (2nd Temple, this is), and is visited by the Angel Gabriel. And the Angel tells him he will become the father of the […]
Matters of Interpretation 