(And all the people who heard this, including the tax-collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.) Just in case we may...

[Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”] More brackets. Just to refresh our memory: brackets indicate that a particular verse or even set of verses are not found in the earliest fragments of the gospel that we have, but were contained in later...

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. It’s another small detail, I know, but again I think very important. Jesus is led away with two others, both criminals, and he will be put to death with them. Why does this matter? Because Jesus, the one we...

We had a fantastic discussion about baptism a week or two ago, one from which I am still learning. I’d like in this post to invite another conversation, this time about prayer. In recent years prayer has become more and more important to me. Not just in my own life, but as I think about the...

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is...