Month: May 2017
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Seventh Sunday of Easter
I blame Jonah. I blame Jonah for this past week having been … unusually uncomfortable. Because … I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being able to point at Jonah and say “what’s wrong with this guy?” I wanted to indulge my first impression of being better than Jonah, because I know that something’s wrong…
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Exegetical Exercise – Jonah 4
The Uniform Series text for Sunday, May 28 is the fourth and final chapter of the book of Jonah. My notes on the text include: “Anger” or “angry” shows up five times in the chapter’s 11 verses; almost all the anger is Jonah’s, although God is mentioned as “slow to anger.” Jonah’s anger is in…
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Sixth Sunday of Easter
[A sermon mostly on Jonah 3, and a little on Revelation 7:9-17, for the Sixth Sunday of Easter.] The people of Nineveh – and to a lesser extent, the animals of Nineveh – are really the main characters of this reading, even though it comes from the book of Jonah and Jonah does play a…
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Shehecheyanu
The girls are graduating from high school. It has required delicate logistical negotiations, because their graduations are on the same day, and too far apart, so yesterday we drove seven hours (round trip) to see our niece graduate from technical school, and some of the family will come to our daughter’s high school graduation and…
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Exegetical Exercise – Jonah 3
The Uniform Series text for Sunday, May 21 is Jonah 3 – the aftermath of Jonah’s escapade with the big fish. This is the text: (1) The word of YHWH came to Jonah a second time, saying: (2) “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell…
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Fifth Sunday of Easter
[A sermon on Jonah 2, with references to Acts 9, which was actually in the Revised Common Lectionary for last week … ] So Jonah’s prayer comes from a dark place; Jonah is in a dark place – not just metaphorically, the way we might mean a place of fear, or desperation, or regret, is…
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Does God Lose People the Way People Lose Keys?
Thinking about “being lost” and being “looked for” (as in, car keys): Dallas Willard, in Renovation of the Heart, specifically uses the example of keys in talking about what it means for something or someone to be “lost.” As in, ultimately, the concept of “lost souls.” So, in his discussion, when something is “lost” it…
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Exegetical Exercise – Jonah 2
According to the Biblia Hebraica, Jonah 2 starts with what the NRSV and others make out to be the last verse of ch. 1. Jonah 2 is the Uniform series text for Sunday, May 14. Mostly NRSV with some modifications … (1) Then YHWH provided a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was…
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Fourth Sunday of Easter
[A sermon on Jonah 1, the Uniform Series text for the day.] What is going on in this little story of the prophet Jonah, son of Amittai, the worst prophet in the history of the world? Right? A prophet who runs away as soon as he gets his commission, a prophet who seems to prefer…
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Religion Question
Everyone knows that religion has no satisfactory definition. Nevertheless, most people know what they recognize as religion, know what they mean by “a religious person,” etc. What people typically recognize includes “official” religiosity – ritual practice, sacred texts, ordained positions, etc. If that were all there was to religion, though, religion would look a lot…
Matters of Interpretation 