Tag: transformation
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Insight
Because I live with “a doctor in the family,” I have been on one side of a lot of medical conversations with family and friends of family over the years. Recently, there was a long conversation that went something like this: “It’s a serious disease.” “You don’t feel bad, because you’re used to living with…
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Life after Birth
One of the perennial questions of the humanities is “What is a good life?” Religious studies ends up in the College of the Humanities in some universities because religion is fully absorbed in answering that question. At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Some Christians think of Christianity as being primarily about “life…
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Challenge
Jesus tells the rich young man that he still lacks one thing, despite or because of all he has. Jesus offers a remedy: “go, sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and then come, follow me.” The rich young man goes away grieving. Christians, especially us rich ones, have been doing…
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Studying Luke 17 11-19
We are studying Luke 17:11-19, along with Leviticus 13:45-46, for Sunday, July 4. [Independence Day! That’s actually a thematic fit with our text, too.] What “everyone knows about leprosy” may not be correct, I’ve recently learned; some notes on the Leviticus text from that perspective are here. With that in mind, here are my notes…
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Reframing
Maybe not everyone gets stuck seeing things just one way, but many of us do. Because of that, hearing from other people, comparing readings, seeing texts and situations “through other eyes,” unlocks new meanings. I might have a hard time imagining your perspective, and you may have a hard time imagining mine, but if we…
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“This Morning, 4 a.m.”
Originally posted on Utopian Discourse: What I wrote this morning: First, it’s been extraordinarily difficult making time to do serious work on this project. It would seem this would be easy, since I’m not teaching and theoretically my part-time job requires fewer hours than teaching. In reality, however, as usual, this has proved not exactly correct…
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Third Sunday of Easter
Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Luke 24:35
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Fourth Sunday in Lent
I’m guessing at least a few people here have heard those “good news, bad news” jokes. Like the one where the doctor comes into the room and says to the patient, well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news … the good news is, we’re going to name a disease after you.” Or…
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Exegetical Exercise – Ephesians 2 1-10
Here’s the text for Sunday’s Uniform Series lesson, Ephesians 2:1-10 (NRSV): (1) You were /dead through the trespasses/ and sins (2) in which you once /lived*/, following the /course/* of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at /work/ among those who are disobedient. (3) All…
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First Sunday in Lent
Those of us who have spent a lot of time hanging out in or around churches have a tendency to know “the right church answers” to a lot of things. We have the idea that we should give this right church answer if the question or the topic comes up.
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A Personal Victory
In the course of doing something routine this morning, wrote down the date, and noticed: it’s the anniversary of my quit date from smoking. That was 14 years ago.
Matters of Interpretation 