Matthew 22:1-14 Dear Partner in Preaching, This may just be my least favorite parable in my least favorite Gospel. (And before you say anything, I know a good working preacher doesn’t play favorites. Well, maybe when it comes to parables, but not Gospels.) Regardless, this parable seems just plain nasty. Not so much because it’s difficult to interpret – it is, to some degree, though mostly, I think, because we don’t like what it says. But rather because of the indiscriminate violence in the passage. What are we to make of it? To get at that question, I’m going to try to summarize what seem to me to be the three main...
Matthew 19:1-9
posted by DJL
When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there. Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” He...
Mark 10:17-31
posted by DJL
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not...
Mark 3:28-30
posted by DJL
‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” These few verses have occasioned...
“Introduction ...
posted by DJL
I absolutely love this poem by Billy Collins because it reminds me to take INTERPRETATION a little less seriously, to invite the poem – or biblical passage – to delight and woo, to dance and sing its way into your heart. I think if readers could remember this, poetry – and...